This dissertation examines structures of race and power in American evangelical hymnody during the nineteenth century. Special attention is placed on the gospel hymn, a popular sacred music genre that emerged in the United States after the Civil War. These hymns were products of musical interracialism dating to 1840. This dissertation describes how Black and white evangelicals performed sacred music, listened to each other, and responded; it argues that racial politics was an important force in establishing modern evangelical hymnody. Multiple musical sources fed into the gospel hymn: notated spirituals, blackface minstrel songs, and revival hymns all structured an evangelical moral economy perpetuated by Black and white actors through gospel hymns. The chapters of this dissertation focus on several settings to investigate the intersection of race, popular culture, and morality in nineteenth-century evangelical hymns. Antebellum southern plantation missions, the northern minstrel stage, Sunday schools, and postbellum urban rescue missions were crucibles for shared sentiment among nineteenth-century American evangelicals. Archival and print sources demonstrate the historical influence of these institutions on evangelical culture through the medium of hymnody. The effects of a racial politics for musical ownership across multiple temporal and geographic locations are visible in hymns. The aesthetics and poetics of gospel hymnody transformed American evangelicalism into a singing faith with intense emotional tendencies by the end of the century. This survey of evangelical hymns demonstrates how music shaped perceptions of race and religious culture in the modern United States.