Music in the North

Like other industries in the North, the music publishing business grew explosively during the war. The music sung in parlors and on theater stages was often written in response to the latest news and was crucial in swaying public opinion and giving voice to the changing mood toward the war. Not only is the music of the period filled with great, accessible melodies, but the excitement of the times is evident in the urgency of the writing.

In The Civil War Songbook, Richard Crawford writes, “Of all the events in American history, perhaps none was reflected in song with such innocent vigor as the Civil War, and none can claim to have given birth to more effective or enduring popular pieces.”

By the time of the war, Americans were buying 20,000 pianos a year, mostly on installment plans--a huge number for the size of the population--and wherever a piano went, sheet music had to follow. Crawford goes on to say, “When the Civil War broke out in 1861 the American sheet-music industry was ready, artistically and technologically, to capitalize on it. Composers and lyricists abounded who could supply topical songs with near-electric speed. Music could be engraved, printed and distributed swiftly by experienced, expert publishers.”

During the war in New York, the popular entertainer Tony Pastor was busy giving song-and-dance a new home, moving it from the minstrel stage and beer garden to his respectable new middle-class theater, inventing the form that would become vaudeville.