My Old Kentucky Home

"My Old Kentucky Home" is an anti-slavery ballad written by Stephen Foster, probably composed in 1852. It was published as "My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night!" in January 1853 by Firth, Pond, & Co. of New York. Foster likely composed the song after having been inspired by the narrative of popular anti-slavery novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," while likely referencing imagery witnessed on his visits to the Bardstown, Kentucky farm called Federal Hill. In Foster's sketchbook, the song was originally entitled "Poor Old Uncle Tom, Good-Night!," but was altered by Foster as "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!". Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist, wrote in his 1855 autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom that the song awakens "the sympathies for the slave, in which antislavery principles take root, grow, and flourish."