America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets provides a
number of opportunities to develop historical thinking skills. A
timeline can be created from some of the song sheets to assess
presidential campaign tactics. Lyrics responding to Abraham
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation provide historical
comprehension of the decision and its repercussions. Songs
describing John Brown's raid on a fort in Harper's Ferry,
Virginia, and his subsequent execution can be used to interpret
how Brown's attack related to the national debate over slavery.
Minstrel songs and other pieces characterizing ethnic
stereotypes can be used to discuss the racial attitudes of
historical and contemporary culture. Politicians in the late-
nineteenth century often attempted to gain support by harkening
back to the ideological conflicts that sparked the Civil War.
Evidence of this tactic, known (for its divisive nature) as
"waving the bloody shirt," is available with a search on the
term, campaign. Military analogies were particularly fit