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.
The choice of a polka was itself likely an effort to broaden the market appeal of the song.
“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.
“I give it about a 73.”
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