These men are negroes, naked, save for loin cloths and girdles, twenty-one in number, and all singers. The hands of each one are chained to the girdle of the one behind and they move up the slope toward Freedom in a slow, melancholy “V.”
As they move, they sing. Their song should, indeed, have scattered the echoes of the farewell acclamation of the pioneers. The strain of it is despair that takes refuge in worship. It is one of the old spirituals, “Go Down Moses.” They move, singing, up to Freedom and she comes sorrowfully down to meet them and the Chronicler rises.
As the negroes finish their song, they kneel at Freedom’s feet and she bends over them.]
Freedom
While you suffer, I am nothing.
The Chronicler
The trial of the race comes with the attainment of its empire.
In the west the factions meet already and the issue is the slave.
Freedom
God alone knows the end
Yet God understands!
[The Chronicler sits and a blare of madness comes upon the music and a new group is upon the forestage. The center of this is an old man, white bearded, with a bloody head and a halter about his neck. Other figures stand about a gibbet. The music subsides softly into “John Brown’s Body” and continues to weave variations upon this until the final moment when the chorus of Union Soldiers takes it up. In the meanwhile, this old man, John Brown, speaks.]