In addition to unraveling the musical implications of an early-nineteenth century hymnal, this book addresses an area of American musical history that has not received its due attention: pre-shape-note, Southern sacred music. Jesse Mercer managed to found several Baptist churches, supervised educational mission schools for the Creek and Cherokee Indians, championed the cause of higher education, developed and refined an influential hymn repertory, a project that spanned nearly half of his 53 year ministry. The author argues that the 1810 edition Mercer's "Cluster of Spiritual Songs" deserves special attention because it is the definitive source for the earliest stratum of Evangelical hymnody in the lower South and it served as textual "midwife" for later southern singing school tune books such as William Walker's "Southern Harmony and Musical Companion" (1835) and B. F. White and E. J. King's "The Sacred Harp" (1844). This book presents these two dimensions sequentially, focusing first on how Mercer's religious, social, and cultural contexts shaped his Baptist hymnodic "offspring," then turning to the texts of the 1810 edition and providing a tune repertory for them from eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century singing school tune books.