"Steal Away" is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Negro spiritual. The song is well known by variations of the chorus:

Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus!

Steal away, steal away home, I hain't got long to stay here.

Many say that songs like "Steal Away to Jesus", and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" is a historic African-American spiritual. The first recording was in 1909, by the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Fisk University....

", "Wade in the Water

Wade in the water

"Wade in the Water" is the name of an African-American spiritual first published in New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers by John Wesley Work II and his brother, Frederick J...

" and the "Gospel Train" are secret codes not only to have faith in God, but were hidden messages for slaves to run away on their own, or with the Underground Railroad

Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...

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"Steal Away" was composed by Wallace Willis

Wallace Willis

Uncle Wallace Willis was a Choctaw freedman living in the Indian Territory. His dates are unclear: perhaps 1820 to 1880. He is credited with composing several Negro spirituals. Willis received his name from his owner, Britt Willis, probably in Mississippi, the ancestral home of the Choctaws...

, Choctaw

Choctaw

The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...

 freedman

Freedman

A freedman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves became freedmen either by manumission or emancipation ....

 in the old Indian Territory

Indian Territory

The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...

, sometime before 1862.

Alexander Reid, a minister at a Choctaw boarding school, heard Willis singing the songs and transcribed the words and melodies. He sent the music to the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The Jubilee Singers then popularized the songs during a tour of the United States and Europe.

"Steal Away" is a standard Gospel song

Gospel music

Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....

, and is found in the hymnals of many Protestant denominations. It has been recorded many times by many artists.

An arrangement of this song is part of Michael Tippett

Michael Tippett

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...

's oratorio A Child of Our Time

A Child of Our Time

A Child of Our Time is an oratorio written by Michael Tippett between 1939 and 1941."After more than ten years of thoughtful planning, Michael Tippett summed up his musical, political, spiritual and philosophical beliefs in his first oratorio, A Child of Our Time...

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