Benjamin Hanby wrote Nelly Gray in 1856, in response to a fugitive slave case …
Category: songs
Home, Sweet Home (Bishop & Payne, 1823)
John Howard Payne’s lyrics, from the 1823 opera, “Clari, Maid of Milan”, described as “a jewel, cut and set with perfect art”:
United States it am de place (Rice, 1858)
This mysterious half-dialect minstrel song from Rice’s 1858 Method for the Banjo offers an intriguing glimpse into the economics and racial politics of the antebellum era…
Mary Blane (1840s)
The lost-love minstrel tune “Mary Blane” was one of the most popular songs of the early minstrel era (see Mahar’s list):
Abraham’s Daughter (Winner, 1861)
“One Country and one Flag, I say, whoe’er the war may slaughter…”
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.”
Southern Girl with the Homespun Dress
“Many a woman who never before held a plow, is now seen in the corn-field…”
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 