The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92927   Message #1782435
Posted By: SharonA
13-Jul-06 - 04:19 AM
Thread Name: Pro Slavery Songs
Subject: RE: Pro Slavery Songs
I guess I should have filled in the n-words with asterisks in my post, even though they were in a quote I copied-and-pasted. I'm sorry if I caused offense by not doing so. Unfortunately, the anti-abolitionists of that time felt no compunction to be respectful toward African slaves, and even well-meaning abolitionists used terms that are now recognized as being derogatory toward African-Americans.

Just in case it's not clear, I abhor the idea of slavery and, had I been alive in the pre-Civil War era, I would have been an abolitionist myself. I grew up within sight of an old stone house with a secret room that had been used to hide fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad (which was quite active in the southeastern Pennsylvania region), so I had a constant reminder of their struggle. But I posted the requested pro-slavery music here because it bothered me that whozit and John O'L seemed unaware of the proliferation of it during that time.

As I said, it's not so easy to find surviving evidence of it (as Jack Campin says, it has no intrinsic redeeming value!) since the abolitionists ultimately won the fight and had every reason to want to eradicate the remnants of pro-slavery sentiment. But let's face it: during that era, songs were a vital means of communication. Seems to me that the existence of so many abolitionist songs is itself clear evidence that the abolitionists were in a musical "shouting match" with anti-abolitionists who had their own songs behind which they rallied.