Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution: Music and Social Change in America

2009

1 SONGS OF THE IMMIGRANTS AND SONGS IN AMERICAN HISTORY AND POLITICS

Arrival

The first people of what is now the United States were the American Indians, whose music is the subject of the next chapter. This chapter will address the music of immigrants dating from the earliest European colonists, beginning with Spanish and followed by British and other Western European settlers. They in turn brought Africans to this country through the slave trade, sometimes directly from that continent, sometimes from the West Indies. I will cover the music of African Americans in considerable detail later in the book.

Drawn by the prospect of a huge, relatively unpopulated country with enormous natural resources, immigrants facing economic difficulty or religious persecution at home sought opportunity in America particularly during the nineteenth century. According to Victor Green’s fascinating survey A Singing Ambivalence: American Immigrants Between Old World and New, 1830–1930, three and a half million Germans, and almost as many Irish immigrants came to the United States from 1830 to 1930. Other large groups of settlers arrived from the various Scandinavian countries, Italy, Poland, Hungary, China, and Mexico, as well as Jewish immigrants from Russia and other Eastern European countries.

Immigrants at Ellis Island, 1908

Songs of the Immigrants

Each group brought their own music and musical style along with them on their travels. In many instances they also brought musical instruments on the ships, singing and playing to pass the time and to take their minds off the voyage and their anxieties about what awaited them in a far-off foreign land. the prevalent themes of their songs were

Desire to return home

Sorrow at parting with family, friends, lovers, or spouses

Aspirations to make a fortune in America before returning home (rather than seek further economic opportunities by staying)

Difficulty adjusting to the English language and American customs

American suspicion of immigrants’ lifestyle and behaviors

Discomfort at the materialism of American culture

There is not space in this book to print songs that delineate each of these attitudes. The reader is referred to Green’s book, and to Jerry Silverman’s Immigrant Songbook, which, unlike Green’s, includes music along with the words to a variety of immigrant songs. In the appendix of this book is a list of songbooks that deal with the songs of specific groups.

While many of the immigrants’ songs reveal nostalgic feelings for the homeland, they also protest the conditions that drove them to seek a better life abroad, and express hopes of peace and plenty at the end of their journey. McKee’s Farewell to Ireland describes Erin’s daisy hills, but at the same time laments the starvation, high rents and taxes that plagued the Irish people. In a later example, Jerry Silverman prints the song Poor Cambodia, credited to Sam Ang Sam. This song depicts the blackhearted Khmer Rouge Cambodians, who were responsible for the genocide of millions of their countrymen from 1975 to 1979.

The Farewell Song for German Emigrants Going to America, like many similar compositions, looks forward to prosperity in the New World with scenes of clover growing three feet tall and butter and meat enough for all. Meanwhile, the Norwegian American song Oleana makes fun of both America and the attempts of Norwegian violinist Ole Bull to found a utopian colony in 1852. It depicts cows who milk themselves and salmon who leap into the kettle to serve a group of happy, well-stuffed citizens who do not need to work to enjoy the good life.

A much bleaker satire comes through in the mid-nineteenth-century Irish immigrant song Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill, which describes unfair bosses and poor working conditions in America: the protagonist, Big Jim Goff, is blown through the air by an explosion, and his wages are docked for the time you were up in the sky. A more serious Irish lament, No Irish Need Apply, complains about a job advertisement containing those very words. Anti-Irish sentiment was common in this period, especially in the northeastern cities where there was a substantial Irish population. Chinese immigrants, many of whom settled in the San Francisco area, also encountered discrimination, both in the city and in the California gold fields. Greene prints a song about a Chinese laundry man that protests the way Christian patrons looked down on the laundry business. It includes the line I can wash handkerchiefs with sad tears. And the composer Morris Rosenfeld, who arrived in New York from the Russian-Polish border in 1886, deplored the New York sweatshops that cost so many immigrant girls their youth and health. Some of Rosenfeld’s songs (unlike the other immigrant songs just described) were published in sheet music, and recorded by a variety of artists.

Steelworker in Homestead, Pennsylvania

Rochelle and Robert L. Wright’s book Danish Emigrant Ballads and Songs presents another aspect of the songs of the immigrant. Virtually all of the songs in the book were published in Denmark, many by the prolific songwriter Julius Strandberg, who published about ten thousand songs by himself and others. Featuring many of the themes of the immigrant songs discussed above, these songs suggest that similar ones must have been published in many of the immigrants’ home countries.

Songs About the Immigrants

The immigrants were not always accepted by the people who were already settled in this country. There is a certain irony to this, given that the only true natives in America were the American Indians, and even they had come long ago from Asia. To put it another way, Beau Allen, in a song about people moving to Colorado, used the line Everyone wants to be the last one in.

Specific stereotypes developed around the behavior, dress, and alleged characteristics of various ethnic and religious groups. This negative stereotyping reached its height in descriptions of African Americans, as we will see in the discussion of African American music. More recently, Mexican Americans have received similar treatment. However, other groups were not exempt from these attitudes. The sort of stereotypes that prevailed include the following:

Irish: Drunken thugs

Italians: Dirty, gangsters

Jews: Greedy, untrustworthy money-grubbers

Germans: Dumb, fat, speak with accents

Chinese: Suited only to be laundry workers, untrustworthy

Poles: Dumb

Scots: Cheap

Jon W. Finson, in his excellent The Voices That Are Gone: Themes in Nineteenth-Century American Popular Song, prints the lyrics to a number of songs that portray immigrant groups in a negative light. This genre of song varied from mildly poking fun at ethnic groups to offensive uses of dialect and downright insulting descriptions of a given group’s behavior. Two New York songwriters named Edward Ned Harrigan and David Braham, writing mostly in the late nineteenth century, specialized in these songs; according to Finson, they wrote almost two hundred songs that dealt with ethnic and racial interaction in New York City. One of the most extreme was The Skidmore Guard, castigating Irish, Dutch (Germans), and Italians and asking for stricter quarantine or stronger fumigation. Lingenfelter, Dwyer, and Cohen print a nasty anti-Chinese song called Get Out, Yellow Skins, Get Out in their book Songs of the American West. The song boasts of stealing gold mined by Chinese miners, and threatens to repeat that act unless the Chinese leave.

Some of the same suspicion that greeted immigrant groups attached itself to the new and growing Mormon population in America. (Joseph Smith founded the Mormon church in New York state in 1830; later his followers moved to Missouri and Illinois to escape persecution. After Smith’s death Brigham Young moved the church’s headquarters to Salt Lake City.) Lingenfelter, Dwyer, and Cohen include thirty-five such songs, ranging from idyllic portraits of the Mormon colony in Utah (Wish I Was a Mormon, 1863) to denunciations of Mormons and their leaders (In the Midst of These Awful Mormons, 1872). The influx of new cultures in the young nation of America was bound to spur tensions, some of which lead to major political happenings that shapes culture and people—wars.

The Revolutionary War

The imposition of taxes on colonial America by the British was one of the primary causes of the Revolutionary War. Various songs celebrated tax resistance on the part of the colonists, including a song about the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766. One of the most celebrated events in early American history was the Boston Tea Party of 1773. The British had passed the Tea Act, which gave the British East India Company a monopoly on tea in the colonies. In Boston a group of rebellious colonists dressed up like Indians, boarded British ships, and threw their cargo of tea overboard. Vera Brodsky Lawrence, in her book Music for Patriots, Politicians, and Presidents: Harmonies and Discords of the First Hundred Years, reprints a song that describes how the colonials boarded the ship and disposed of the tea.

The American Revolution soon followed, and other songs celebrated the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill in 1775. One of the unusual aspects of the songs of the Revolutionary War is that a number of the political leaders of the rebellion, including Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, wrote songs to assist the cause. It is difficult to imagine contemporary political figures writing songs to galvanize their supporters; still, a handful of American politicians since the time of the Revolution, including Senator Orrin Hatch, Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis, and West Virginia fiddler and senator Robert Byrd, have used music to bolster their political campaigns. Quite a few of these early songs did not use original melodies, but were parodies of existing (often British) popular songs.

One of the most famous songs of the period was composer William Billings’ renowned song Chester, which declares the new country’s trust in God, deplores British generals Burgoyne and Clinton and Admiral Howe, and describes generals yielding to beardless boys.

Other songs celebrate leaders like General Mad Anthony Wayne and Vermont Green Mountain Volunteer leader Johnny Stark. The latter song, The Bennington Riflemen, has been reprinted in many songbooks, with its stirring chorus Oh the rifle, oh the rifle in our hands will prove no trifle.

As a substantial number of colonists sided with the British during the war, not all of the songs of the period were anti-British. Lawrence prints the song Bunker’s Hill, a New Song, which celebrates the British fight against the rebels and praises the great Howe, our brave commander. Yet another wrinkle was the rebels’ fascination with Major John André. André was a British spy who recruited the traitor Benedict Arnold to convert to the British cause. The Britisher was caught after a meeting with Arnold and was executed as a spy. The song Death of Major André praises André’s courage and his demeanor to the very moment of his death. It even expresses the wish that André could have been freed and Arnold killed in his stead. According to Lawrence, songs and poems about André’s fate continued to be written for years after the event.

As was later the case with the songs of the Civil War, some songs were used by both camps, with different sets of lyrics. The song Yankee Doodle is a prime example. According to Lawrence, the original version of the song dated to the French and Indian War, fought in the 1750s, when the American people were still loyal British subjects. The original lyric was a condescending description of the American colonists. It was written from the viewpoint of British soldiers, and questioned the courage of the Yankee soldiers. The later, pro-rebel version, which is the one we sing in American schools today, celebrated the heroism of George Washington and his American soldiers.

Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier, one of the earliest antiwar songs, dates from the Revolutionary War. Peter, Paul, and Mary recorded it almost two hundred years later, and it also appears in various song collections, including Jerry Silverman’s Folk Song Encyclopedia, Volume II. The song expresses the viewpoint of the soldier’s wife or girlfriend, who is crying her fill and laments that she is heartbroken.

The Postcolonial Era

The Revolutionary War ended in 1783, and the United States became an independent nation. George Washington, the general who had led the United States Army to victory, became the country’s first president.

Although not everyone was enthralled with his agenda, Washington’s status as a national hero enabled him to govern relatively smoothly. After his second term of office, two political parties battled for control of the government. The Federalists represented a comparatively conservative, aristocratic group who believed in a strong central government, while the Democratic-Republicans, under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, espoused more liberal views.

When John Adams became president in 1796, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Naturalization Act, which fell into this set of laws, established that to be a citizen one had to have been a resident of the United States for a minimum of fourteen years. Only citizens were allowed to vote. The Sedition Act made it a crime to oppose any government measure in speech or print. The penalties were fines and jail terms. Some Republicans were in fact jailed under this measure.

Both parties advocated their views in songs. The Federalists’ favorite was Hail Columbia, adapted from an earlier work by lyricist Joseph Hopkinson. It throws in the name of everyone’s hero, George Washington, and describes threats to the country’s existence. Another song that has retained some presence in American history is the pro-Jefferson song Jefferson and Liberty, which has the catchy and very singable chorus

Rejoice, Columbia’s sons, rejoice!

To tyrants never bend the knee,

But join with heart and soul and voice,

For Jefferson and liberty.

According to Lawrence, the first printing of the song occurred in January 1801, at about the time of Jefferson’s inauguration as president.

The War of 1812

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, America experienced difficulties with both France and England. Both countries attempted to intercept American ships and, in England’s case, to remove American sailors. This impressment was undertaken by using the argument that Americans were really British citizens.

In the late 1790s the United States came close to war with France, but when Napoleon came to power in 1799 he brought these hostilities to a close. In the case of England, conflict was less easily avoided; Britain yearned to restore America to its kingdom, while on the American side imperialists agitated for war, believing that if we defeated the British again we could also wrest Canada from their control.

An odd artifact of the war is the song James Bird, printed in Ethel and Chauncey O. Moore’s Ballads and Folk Songs of the Southwest. Bird’s story resembles that of Benedict Arnold. Bird fought bravely during the War of 1812, but then deserted and was captured, tried, and executed. This long ballad begins by describing Bird as noble, graceful, and manly, acknowledging in a letter to his parents that he has deserted the ship and must suffer for it. The song concludes with the execution and the burial of Bird’s mangled corpse on Lake Erie’s distant shore.

Possibly the most significant musical event of the war was the birth of what became America’s national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. As Vera Brodsky Lawrence tells the tale, on September 5, 1814, Washington, D.C. attorney Francis Scott Key boarded a British ship to negotiate the release of his friend Dr. William Beanes, who had been taken prisoner. While this transaction was taking place, the British were bombarding Fort McHenry, an event that Key witnessed firsthand. That night Key wrote his lyric, which was set to an old British tune called Anacreon in Heaven. The original lyric had several verses that are rarely, if ever, sung today, but the verse and refrain are known by every schoolchild in America.

The war ended in a complete stalemate, with neither side able to claim victory. In fact, the Battle of New Orleans, which gave the Americans their greatest triumph of the war, took place on January 8, 1815, eleven days after the end of the war. In 1959, almost 150 years after the war of 1812, Johnny Horton recorded a long ballad written by a high school principal from Timbo, Arkansas named Jimmy Driftwood, called The Battle of New Orleans. The lyric refers to Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory, who had commanded the victorious army, and the bravery of the American soldiers. It sounds like an authentic folk song, and in fact the verse uses the melody of an old fiddle tune called The Eighth of January. The song became a runaway hit record, and was awarded a Grammy in 1960 as 1959’s Song of the Year. Aside from the national anthem, it is certainly the best-known song about the War of 1812.

The Mexican War

In 1803 Thomas Jefferson negotiated the terms of the Louisiana Purchase with France. For slightly more then twenty-three million dollars the United States acquired some fifteen states, including a large part of the Midwest and portions of what became the Rocky Mountain states.

The purchase marked the beginning of an aggressive expansionism that came to be known as Manifest Destiny—a phrase coined in support of America’s proposed annexation of Texas in 1845. Mexico, which owned most of the American Southwest, now stood in the way of plans to extend the young nation from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Pacific.

Texas had fought a war of independence with Mexico in 1836 and was operating as an independent republic, but Mexico still claimed ownership. In 1846 the United States, which had granted Texas statehood, invaded Mexico, defeating the Mexicans in little more than a year. In 1848 a peace treaty was signed, and Mexico, in exchange for fifteen million dollars and a debt relief package, relinquished Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and portions of what later became Colorado to the United States.

Later in the book I will discuss the music of Mexican Americans in detail. The songs on the American side of the conflict include a tribute to General, and later President, Zachary Taylor, entitled Hurrah for Rough and Ready, and Strike for Your Rights, Avenge Your Wrong, a call to arms that marshals American troops against the jails of Santa Fe, where their countrymen are in captivity. The song Maid of Monterey pays tribute to a Mexican woman who nursed the American wounded during the war, even though she favored the Mexican cause. Many Americans, too, sympathized with Mexico, and several thousand American soldiers actually defected to the Mexican side.

Davy Crockett and Other Heroes

Davy Crockett, known as an Indian fighter (one who fights American Indians), is one of the most identifiable pioneer heroes in American history. He fought against the Creek Indians in 1813—14, served in the U.S. Congress, and died at the Alamo in the fight for Texas independence that ultimately led to the Mexican War.

The Lomaxes print a song called The Ballad of Davy Crockett in their book American Ballads and Folk Songs that pays tribute to Davy’s strength. The sheet music for a song called the Crockett Victory March appeared in 1835, and in 1846 a minstrel song titled Pompeyu Smash depicted a knock-down, drag-out fight between Crockett and a slave named Pompey. The result was a stalemate. Davy surfaced again with a 1954 Disney TV show, with Fess Parker playing the title character. The theme song became a hit record in three different versions. The most popular version was by Bill Hayes; Tennessee Ernie Ford had a country hit with his version, and Parker’s version also made the charts. The long ballad describes Crockett’s political career and his heroic death at the Alamo, and even touches on his legend with the final phrase describing him as king of the wild frontier!

Another Indian fighter, William Henry Harrison commanded a thousand American troops at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, defeating the poorly armed Indian forces. His 1840 presidential campaign slogan, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too (referring to the battle and to Harrison’s running mate, John Tyler) also became the title of a popular song.

The Hutchinson Family Singers

The Hutchinson Family Singers were a family of New Hampshire musicians who sang contemporary lyrics often set to well-known tunes. Directed by Jesse Hutchinson, the group consisted of five family members who traveled in New England and New York, later crossing the Atlantic to perform in London.

Like many Americans, the Hutchinson singers opposed the war with Mexico, rejecting it as an attempt to extend the geographical reach of slavery. Their song Eight Dollars a Day, written by J. J. Hutchinson, denounces the United States Congress—fiddling to the tune of eight dollars a day—and their mad cry of war. The Hutchinsons were active in the antislavery struggle, and also sang for the temperance movement, which is covered in the chapter on women and music.

Incidental References

All of the songs discussed in this section have been composed songs, but a handful of folk songs that have survived also make incidental references to the Mexican War. Jean Ritchie sings a song that mentions a little trouble down in Mexico, nobody hurt by Jeremy Taylor-o. The rest of the song consists of square dance calls, and has no bearing on the war. The sea shanty Santy Anno, in which ships travel around Cape Horn to the California gold mines, contains one verse that refers specifically to General Santa Ana:

Santy Anno was a good old man, heave away, Santy Anno,

Until he went to war with his Uncle Sam, all on the plains of Mexico.

Some other versions attribute heroic qualities to the Mexican general and his men, and some even picture him as being victorious.

The Period Before the Civil War

At the time of the Civil War, which was fought in from 1861 to 1865, two basic issues divided the North and the South. One was the issue of slavery, which continued to be important in most of the Southern states but was now widely condemned in the North. The other was the notion of states’ rights in opposition to the power of the federal government.

The Hutchinson Family Singers

While some Northerners took up slavery as a cause, believing that it violated American principles of freedom and democracy, many others, basically indifferent to the plight of African Americans, simply recognized that the institutions of slavery did not suit the needs of the industrial North.

As new states opened up for settlement in the Midwest, Northern and Southern settlers clashed over whether the state should permit slavery. In 1820 the Missouri Compromise dealt with the issue of slavery in the area acquired through the Louisiana Purchase. Anything north of latitude 36° 30’ was declared closed to slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 specified that in the states of Kansas and Nebraska (which would have been free states under the Compromise) the voters could choose whether they wished to permit slavery. Antislavery forces, seeing the law as a concession to Southern slaveholders, formed the Republican Party in opposition to the act and ran a candidate, explorer James Fremont, in the 1856 presidential election.

The election was a three-way contest between Fremont, Democrat James Buchanan, and former president Milllard Fillmore, running as the candidate of the Know-Nothing Party. The latter group was opposed to Catholic immigration, and worked to curb immigration and naturalization generally. The party eventually split over the issue of slavery, and the dominant, antislavery bloc joined the Republican Party.

Lawrence prints a number of songs supporting the various factions (and often insulting the opposition). An odd sidelight of the campaign was that the famous songwriter Stephen Foster’s talents were enlisted in the Buchanan cause, because Foster’s sister was married to Buchanan’s brother.

The Civil War

The Civil War was a unique event in American history. Although it was not really fought over the issue of slavery, but rather the question of states’ rights, it resulted in the freeing of the slaves. As countless movies, novels, and songs attest, it pitted brother against brother and friends against one another, and resulted in four years of continuous warfare that threatened the very existence of the United States as a single nation.

There are so many Civil War songs that several published books consist entirely of songs of the Union and Confederate forces. Willard A. and Porter W. Heaps printed hundreds of these songs in their authoritative work The Singing Sixties: The Spirit of Civil War Days Drawn from the Music of the Times.

As the reader has seen in other songs of America’s wars, the songs express admiration for military heroes, longings for home and family, the sadness of the constant specter of death and wounds, and even a feverish desire for an end to the conflict. The latter notion is seen in The Cruel War, with the line The cruel war is raging, and Johnny has to fight. The Union forces sing, We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree, while the Confederates respond, Our soil’s been tramped by hostile foes.

Many of these songs contain hidden ironies in their history, if not in their lyrics. For example, the song Dixie was written by Northerner Dan Emmett, but became the ultimate anthem of the South. A similar fate befell All Quiet Along the Potomac; written by a Confederate soldier to commemorate a comrade killed on picket duty, the song was also adapted by the Union side. Clearly, this descriptive narrative of a seeming lull on the battlefield that ends in the death of a soldier resonated with on the armies of both sides.

The Spanish-American War

The Spanish-American War was a short-lived conflict (109 days) that sprang from America’s involvement in Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain. When the U.S.S. Maine, sent to Havana to protect American interests there, blew up in the harbor, Spain was blamed and Congress passed a resolution authorizing military force in Cuba. Spain declared war in April and sued for peace in August, turning over Puerto Rico, the Philippine Islands, and Guam to the United States.

The songs of the war celebrate the American victories, and in particular Theodore Roosevelt’s exploits on San Juan Hill. They also respond, not favorably, to some Filipinos’ wish to obtain independence rather then to assume an identity as an American colony. In Mindanao, printed in Jerry Silverman’s American History Songbook, depicts the hardships of insect bites and the physical labor of clearing the land of stumps. Another song of the period, printed in Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag, denounces the damn Filipinos. Damn the Filipinos is a postwar song that is even more explicitly anti-Filipino, accusing its subjects of stealing and lying.

Other songs of the period include the 1900 tribute to Theodore Roosevelt When Teddy Comes Marching Home, and various versions of the song The Battleship of Maine that describe the war and the sinking of the ship. The folk revival group the New Lost City Ramblers famously performed the latter, which includes the chorus At war with that great nation Spain . . . it was all about that battleship of Maine. Other versions of the song have been collected in Arkansas and North Carolina.

World War I

World War I was a conflict between England, France, and Russia, allied against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs. When the Russian Revolution occurred in October 1917, the Russians withdrew from the war. President Woodrow Wilson had actually run his re-election campaign on the slogan that he had kept the United States out of the war, but nevertheless he soon convinced the U.S. Congress to enter it.

World War I was a controversial war in the United States, and some left-wing American political factions opposed our participation in what they referred to as an imperialist war. Isolationist groups, who believed in staying out of world conflicts, also decried U.S. involvement. In 1915, Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi wrote the song I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier. It contained the lyrics

Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,

Who may never return again.

Ten million hearts must break

For the ones who died in vain.

Head bowed down in sorrow

In her lonely years,

I heard a mother murmur through her tears:

(Chorus)

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,

I brought him up to be my pride and joy,

Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder

To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?

It’s time to lay the sword and gun away,

There’d be no war today,

If mothers all would say,

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.

The song concludes with the line: Remember that my boy belongs to me!

Still, a raft of patriotic songs supported the war, and some are still well-known today, almost a hundred years later. Many of them were written by professional songwriters, such as George M. Cohan’s 1918 song Over There, with its impassioned cry that the Yanks are coming. Another example is Robert Levenson and E. E . Bagley’s That’s What the Red, White and Blue Mean, whose chorus attributes distinct virtues to the colors of the flag. The Marine Corps Hymn wasn’t copyrighted until 1919, but the lyrics refer to the Mexican War and to the undeclared wars with the Barbary pirates of North Africa in the early nineteenth century. The tune comes from Offenbach’s Two Gendarmes, published in 1859, but the lyrics appear to be the result of various additions over the years. The end of the song describes Army and Navy troops observing the Marines on guard in Heaven.

Other Early Political Songs

Every election has enlisted music in the cause of its participants; Irwin Silber prints many of these long-forgotten songs in his book Songs America Voted By. The contents include positive songs favoring a particular candidate, and negative ones attacking the opposition.

The positive songs tend to refer to the candidate’s patriotism, especially battlefield experience. Examples include:

Heroism—leading the troops or enduring wounds

Love of country

Down-to-earth characteristics, even a nickname, such as Old Hickory for Andrew Jackson

The negative songs charge opponents with:

Cowardice—fleeing a battle or losing one

Snobbery—aristocratic dress or mannerisms

Associations with bad people, such as a song about William McKinley, associating him with the corrupt party boss Mark Hanna

Racist stereotypes, especially anti-African American references after the Civil War

In addition to bravery in battle, prominent leaders’ deaths in peacetime have been commemorated in song, as in a folk song recounting the assassination of President Garfield, with its pitiful description of Garfield’s widow at the dying man’s bedside.

The songs of later wars, which often relate to more contemporary issues than the ones discussed here, will feature in the corresponding sections of this book.

2 NATIVE AMERICAN MUSIC AND SOCIAL ISSUES

The Inadvertent Host

Most Americans see the history of American Indians from the viewpoint of the Western Europeans who settled in the United States in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Europeans came to America seeking economic opportunities, searching for religious or political freedom, or simply because they felt that any change might represent a possible improvement in the quality of their lives.

When these early immigrants arrived in the New World, they found the land was already occupied. This did not represent a military challenge to the invaders, because the Indians were spread out in many separate tribal groups. Some tribes were sedentary, some nomadic. There were tribes who were tied together in a sort of loose political confederation, notably the Iroquois, and others who fought each other. Many tribes were so geographically removed from one another that they had no interactions with any other group.

The Indians had no understanding of who these visitors were or exactly what had brought them to America. If the Indians had been a unified group, and had immediately sensed that their lives