Lucius Manlius Sargent › Tunes

Sargent, Lucius Manlius. (Boston, Massachusetts, June 25, 1786--June 2, 1867, Boston). A layman of independent mans, author of many articles advocating temperance. His temperance hymn beginning "Slavery and death the cup contains" was written during the Washingtonian Temperance Revival and appeared in Adams' and Chapin's Unitarian Hymns for Christian Devotion (Boston, 1846). In the American Methodist Episcopal Hymnal (1878), the first line is altered to read "Bondage and death the cup contains." The hymn is included, with the original wording, in the Universalist Church Harmonies (1895).

--Henry Wilder Foote, DNAH Archives