From at least the 1810s, blackface clowns were popular in the United States.[25] British actor Charles Mathews toured the U.S. in 1822–23, and as a result added a "black" characterization to his repertoire of British regional types for his next show, A Trip to America, which included Mathews singing "Possum up a Gum Tree", a popular slave freedom song.[26] Edwin Forrest played a plantation black in 1823,[26] and George Washington Dixon was already building his stage career around blackface in 1828,[27] but it was another white comic actor, Thomas D. Rice, who truly popularized blackface. Rice introduced the song "Jump Jim Crow" accompanied by a dance in his stage act in 1828[28] and scored stardom with it by 1832.[29]