Following the creation of the United States, profound disagreements remained over how to secure the survival of the republic and unite its diverse population. In this pathbreaking account, Billy Coleman uses the history of American music to illuminate the relationship between elite power and the people from the early national period to the Civil War. Based on deep archival research in sources such as music periodicals, songbooks, and manuals for musical instruction, Coleman argues that a particular ideal of musical power provided conservative elites with an attractive road map for producing the harmonious union they desired. He reassesses the logic behind the decision to compose popular patriotic anthems like "The Star-Spangled Banner," reconsiders the purpose of early American campaign songs, and brings to life a host of often forgotten but fascinating musical organizations and individuals. The result is not only a striking interpretation of music in American political life but also a fresh understanding of conflicts that continue to animate American democracy.
Using the famously musical presidential election of 1840 as a centerpiece, this chapter traces how the American Whig Party drew from evangelical religion and reform to cast their campaign music as a respectable and refining influence over an otherwise unruly process of popular democracy. Indeed, for Whigs, the use of campaign songs was less about attracting voters to the polls than it was about reining in the dangers attendant to those who had already shown their willingness to participate. Accordingly, when Democrats criticized Whig campaign singing they were not criticizing the idea of music in elections so much as they were highlighting the supposed hypocrisy of a party whose use of campaign songs betrayed, as Democrats saw it, a preference for improving the people rather than submitting to their will.
This chapter explores the thus far unexamined early life of S. Willard Saxton. In the grand scheme of American history Saxton was not an especially significant figure: he spent most of his time in the 1850s as a Boston-based itinerant printer–perennially mired in debt–frequenting concerts and making small talk with girls he fancied. But Saxton’s unusually large and evocative manuscript diary offers unparalleled insight into the mind of a reform-minded young man who harbored a deep love for music and who cultivated an ever-developing taste for politics. Saxton’s relationship to music helped fuel his decision to cast a vote for the first time, volunteer at the polls, survive for a time as an avowed abolitionist in the South, and ultimately to interpret emancipation and Union victory as the realization of the better world that music had encouraged him to believe had always been coming. The chapter also includes details of Saxton’s relationship to John S. Dwight, experiences with Jenny Lind and the Hutchinson Family Singers, and the significance of his engagement with Fourierism and life at Brook Farm.
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