The Impeachment Polka: Literally Dancing Through the Senate Trial

The most talked-about event of the first-half of 1868 was the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Why not cash in by turning impeachment into a dance tune? That must have been the thinking of the composer Charles Dupee Blake who wrote The Impeachment Polka and sold sheet music of it to the piano playing masses. Here is the polka:

 


Michael Adcock performs the “Impeachment Polka”

The impeachment was a major focus of American culture in 1868. According to the Washington Post:

In 1868, everybody was talking about the Johnson impeachment.

“Tickets to the impeachment trial in the Senate for Johnson in 1868 were the hottest items in town,” said Brenda Wineapple, author of “The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation,” when we spoke with her by phone Wednesday. “They were very hard to get hold of. People were lined up outside the building early in the morning to try to get in.”

Newspapers printed multiple editions a day in some places with updates on the developments — and on the drama surrounding it.

“The newspapers were not only covering what was going on, but they were covering who was there, who was sitting in the ladies gallery, what were they were wearing,” Wineapple said. “It was very built into the culture — and it was a major cultural event.”

And, she said, a lot of people were capitalizing on it.

Including composer Charles D. Blake. That might seem like an odd occupation from which to try to make a buck off politics, but remember, this was only three years after the end of the Civil War. The phonograph wouldn’t be invented for almost another decade. It was a time when many middle- and upper-class homes had pianos and, in lieu of recordings of favorite songs, families would buy sheet music that allowed them to play the songs themselves.

Sheet music “was really a big business,” said music bibliographer Donald W. Krummel in a phone conversation with The Washington Post. “It was all over the country, little publishing firms in little towns but also in big cities.”…

The choice of a polka was itself likely an effort to broaden the market appeal of the song.

For all of our articles on the Johnson Impeachment CLICK HERE.
“In 1868 … the polka and the waltz and the mazurka and the gallop were the most popular ballroom dances, other than a quadrille, which is like a square dance,” said Carol Téten, an expert on historical dance. The polka, in particular, was embraced, regardless of age or economic status.

“It is probably one of the most far-reaching couple dances, even more so than the waltz, because it’s easier to do than the waltz,” she said. “It’s boisterous and happy and explosive and freeing. From kids all the way through, you can do it.”

If you wanted to sell as many copies of a piece of sheet music as possible at that moment, Téten said, the polka was a good choice.

The piece itself appears to have avoided one possible constraint on its appeal. With no lyrics — it was likely written to be danced to, Krummel said — it didn’t seem to advocate any particular position on the impeachment itself.

 

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Author: Patrick Young

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