Jesse Hutchinson, Jr.  "The Slave's Appeal."  Adapted by Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., from H. Piercy's "The Beggar Girl (Over the Mountain and Over the Moor)."  First line: "Over the mountain, and over the moor, Comes the sad wailing of many a poor slave."  First line of chorus: "Pity, kind gentlemen, friends of humanity, Cold is the world to the cries of God's poor."  N.d. [No later than the 1845-1846 concert season. Known earlier listings seem ambiguous to me.]

• H. Piercy.  "The Beggar Girl: A Favorite Ballad for the Piano Forte or Harp: Also as a Duett."  Music [and lyrics?]: H. Piercy.  London: H. Piercy.  N.d. [Circa 1798].
• Score may be found at "The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music," levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu.
• "The Slave's Appeal" was one of the most famous and infamous pieces sung by Abby Hutchinson. The quartet's antislavery songs - especially this one and "Get Off the Track!" - were often greeted with threats of mob violence; and at other times, at antislavery meetings, the singers were called on to quiet the mob's dark heart with song. Artist, writer, and Hutchinson Family friend Francis Bicknell Carpenter (1830-1900) said that Abby "would look directly into the eyes of the mob leaders, invariably with the effect of subduing the unruly spirits." - Frank Carpenter, New York Home Journal, December 7, 1892
• Frank Carpenter's fine portrait of Abby Hutchinson Patton is in the collection of the Lynn Historical Society in Massachusetts. I'm drawing a blank, though, on what became of his portrait of John W. Hutchinson (1821-1908). Do you know?

-- Alan Lewis, October 8, 2002