Songsheets – The Hardtacks

Dixie’s Land No. 5 (“Come, patriots all who hate oppression…”)

This LOC.gov songsheet shows us how Union partisans re-purposed Emmett’s 1859 minstrel walkaround: The opening lines establish reasons for

Walk in the Parlor (1850s)

Note especially the connections delineated between slavery, land, and knowledge…

I’m Off for California (1850s?)

Here’s a song you’ll recognize, and yet… it’s a side of the Gold Rush story you might not have heard about in school: The melody is Stephen Foster‘s first big hit, “Oh Susannah” (1847), ubiquitous in its time and still common in the “folk song” tradition over a century and a half later. Foster’s original composition features two world-changing technologies…

Star-Spangled Banner (Key, 1814)

What’s the connection between the US National Anthem, militant slave uprisings, and the burning of the White House?

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852-1859?)

“Euclid… is no child for effecting social revolutions, but an impassioned song may set a world in conflagration.” ~ The London Times (3 September 1852)

Nelly Gray (Hanby, 1856)

Benjamin Hanby wrote Nelly Gray in 1856, in response to a fugitive slave case …

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…

Abraham’s Daughter (Winner, 1861)

“One Country and one Flag, I say, whoe’er the war may slaughter…”

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.”