Mahar’s survey of early minstrel materials delineates the complex cultural turbulence of the antebellum era:
Author: Marek
Cartoonist, musician, teacher.
Billings: Hardtack and Coffee (1887)
INCLUDING CHAPTERS ON: ENLISTING, LIFE IN TENTS AND LOG HUTS, JONAHS AND BEATS, OFFENCES AND PUNISHMENTS, RAW RECRUITS, FORAGING, CORPS AND CORPS BADGES, THE WAGON TRAINS, THE ARMY MULE, THE ENGINEER CORPS, THE SIGNAL CORPS, ETC. …
Battle Cry of Freedom: “If we’d had your songs…”
Account given by anonymous captured Confederate officer…
Gum Tree Canoe (1847?)
A peculiar plantation fantasy of love & liberation…
Here I Am as You Diskiver (1860)
Blackface minstrel tune conflating plantation slavery, the “Indian Nation” (& associated issues of Removal), & antebellum militarism in public space:
Picket Guard (Beers & Hewitt, 1861)
“His musket falls slack, his face dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep–
For their mother–may Heaven defend her.”
Come up from the fields, father (Walt Whitman, 1865)
Come up from the fields, father (Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: Drum Taps, 1865)
Just Before the Battle, Mother (Root, 1863)
“At my request they sat down and sang, and when about half through, as I stepped to the door, a shell exploded within fifty yards…”
Southern Girl with the Homespun Dress
“Many a woman who never before held a plow, is now seen in the corn-field…”
Brown University: “African American Sheet Music”
“This consists of music by and relating to African Americans, from the 1820s to the present day, and consists of approximately 6,000 items. …”
My Old Kentucky Home (Foster, 1853)
Stephen Foster’s anthem recounts “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in three verses.
Lucy Neal (J. P. Carter, 1844)
A relentless love song & bitter critique of slavery:
The Hardtacks 