While modern political campaigns typically employ popular music at rallies as walk-on music for candidates, in the 19th Century most campaigns came armed with a panoply of songs for supporters to sing while marching in political parades. In 1868 the opposing candidates squared off against each other with explicit songs about their position on the racial question. The Democrats rallied for Horatio Seymour and Frank Blair to the tune “Raise High the White Man’s Banner.” Republicans sang this song, “Grant, Grant, Grant” which promised that Ulysses S. Grant would make the “Ku Klux Klan…shiver in their shoes.”
The song invokes Grant’s role as the general who defeated the Confederacy, the Savior of the Union. It describes the Democrats as the peacetime manifestation of the Confederates, whom it describes as the “Traitor Horde.” It describes the “Traitor ever as a foe.” In other words, the 1868 Campaign is just a continuation of the Civil War by other means. Oh yes, and it insists that “Andy must go.” Here Andrew Johnson is as much an opponent of Grant as Horatio Seymour.
Note: Thanks to Noma Petroff for reminding me of this song and providing a link to Oscar Brand’s rendition of it.
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