…updates Dan Emmett’s “Jordan is a Hard Road to Travel” for an abolitionist audience.
Category: songs
Uncle Sam’s Farm: “One grand, ocean-bound republic”
Stephen A. Douglas (1858): “This Union will not only live forever, but it will extend and expand until it covers the whole continent, and makes this confederacy one grand, ocean-bound Republic…”
Song of the 1st of Arkansas (1864)
This rewrite of “Battle-Hymn of the Republic” puts the agency of social and economic upheaval squarely on the shoulders — or rather, under the boot-heels — of Colored Troops.
Jim Crow (Rice, 1830)
If we can hold our immediate revulsion at the (now offensive) language, we’ll find some shocking critique and surprisingly liberal views in the lyrics…
Jeff in Petticoats (Tucker & Cooper, 1865)
A humorous slather of wordplay and derision aimed at (former) confederate president Jefferson Davis…
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Willis, 1850s?)
Wallis Willis created the song “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” sometime before 1862; we like to pair it with this 1862 photograph by Concord, NH’s own H.P Moore.
Home, Sweet Home: “Had we not had the river between us”
One private’s account of the power & presence of music after a terrible battle:
Dixie: “One of the best songs I have ever heard…” (1865)
Abraham Lincoln (April 10, 1865): “Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it.”
Ring, Ring De Banjo (Foster, 1851)
Frederick Douglass (1845) ~ “Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears…”
Kingdom Coming: “It was a proud moment for Robert” (1863)
Esther Hill Hawks ~ Diary (February 1863) ~ “It was a proud moment for Robert when he placed a guard of colored soldiers around the house of his former owner…”
Angelina Baker (Foster, 1850)
Stephen C. Foster ~ Letter to E. P. Christy (May 25, 1852) ~ “As I once intimated to you, I had the intention of omitting my name* on my Ethiopian songs, owing to the prejudice against them by some, which might injure my reputation as a writer of another style of music…”
John Brown’s Original Marching Song (1861)
So is this song about THE John Brown (abolitionist & domestic terrorist), or a more obscure John Brown (enlisted in the 12th MA)… ?
The Hardtacks 