Although usually thought of as a spiritual, the earliest written record of the song was as a rallying anthem for the
Contrabands at
Fort Monroe sometime before July 1862. White people who reported on the song presumed it was composed by them. It became the first spiritual known to be recorded in sheet music. While the Reverend Lewis Lockwood, the chaplain of the Contrabands, was visiting Fortress Monroe in 1861, he heard runaway enslaved people singing the song, transcribed what he heard, and eventually published it in the
National Anti-Slavery Standard. Soon after, sheet music was published titled "Oh! Let My People Go: The Song of the Contrabands", arranged by
Horace Waters. Lockwood stated in the sheet music that the song was from Virginia, dating from about 1853. However, the song was not included in
Slave Songs of the United States, despite its being a very prominent spiritual among enslaved people. Furthermore, the original version of the song sung by enslaved people almost definitely sounded very different from what Lockwood transcribed by ear, especially following an arrangement by a person who had never heard the song as it was originally sung. The opening verse, as recorded by Lockwood, is: Sarah Bradford's authorized biography of
Harriet Tubman,
Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869), quotes Tubman as saying she used "Go Down Moses" as one of two code songs used with fugitive enslaved people to communicate when fleeing Maryland. Tubman began her underground railroad work in 1850 and continued until the beginning of the
Civil War, so it is possible Tubman's use of the song predates the origin claimed by Lockwood. Some people even hypothesize that she herself may have written the spiritual. Others claim that
Nat Turner, who led one of the most well-known slave revolts in history, either wrote or was the inspiration for the song. ==Recordings==