This exhibit was mounted from March to April 2008 in the Orwig Music Library.
Between 1860 and 1865, music about Abraham Lincoln proliferated. Lincoln appeared in campaign pieces, war and memorial numbers, emancipation songs, and minstrel music. Some songs lauded Lincoln, others lampooned him. Much more than simply suggesting 19th century musical fashions, Lincoln songs are an important source for understanding popular attitudes toward the 16th President and his policy agenda.
The exhibition displayed materials from the Lincoln Collection at the John Hay Library and is part of the Library’s celebration of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial.
For more information, contact orwig@brown.edu
Image: Union [pseudonym], “Vote for Abraham: Campaign Song of ’64”. Published at Burlington, Vermont by H. L. Story, 1864. Cover engraving
by H. F. Greene, Boston.
