That’s what I plan be subjecting my “Age of Jefferson” class to in the morning, as a way of explaining the “celebratory politics” of the Early Republic and also keeping my Election Day emotions in check a little better than speaking too much will.  From the 1790s on, highly detailed political songs were a popular and important part of most campaigns and movements. They were published in newspapers and on their own, to be read for amusement and actually sung at banquets, meetings, parades, and taverns. The lyrics were usually written for a particular occasion, but most of the tunes were standards like “God Save the King,” “Yankee Doodle,” or that British drinking song they play at the start of baseball games. Less often but increasingly, original melodies were created and the songs published as sheet music. Paul Erickson at AAS passed on a link to a Library of Congress online collection of campaign sheet music that mostly comes from the middle and later 19th-century when the major parties were in the habit of commissioning official campaign songs. In the earlier Federalist/Democratic-Republican era, where most of my research interests reside, political songs were a considerably more local, informal, and quirky affair. As one example, here (at right) is a song from 1797 New Jersey that is an earlier example of the Republican complaints about female Federalist voting that Rosie Zagarri’s recent book and “Lost Atlantis” post described. There are many, many more political songs where that comes from, and perhaps I will throw a few more of them up here on the blog from time to time.

Interestingly, music has not been a big part of this election cycle, has it? There has been nothing like the outpouring of politically charged pop music that occurred in 2004, in the heydey of MoveOn. Remember The Future Soundtrack for America or the Eminem Internet video “Mosh” ? They seemed pretty powerful at the time, but electorally speaking, not so much, it turned out. I have to say the relative lack of musical activity this time seems like a good sign for Obama. Post-JFK, the entertainment industry’s occasional bursts of enthusiasm for moderately left-wing party politics have not generally coincided with Democratic presidential victories. Quite the opposite. I’m looking at you, McGovern campaign.

P.S. Just to fill out the post, I am also including a Federalist drinking song penned for the “Joe Six-Packs” of Vermont in 1799 by playwright/poet Royall Tyler.

P.P.S. These are from the original newspapers, but you can find these and many other wonderful political songs reprinted in the book Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Music for Patriots, Politicians, and Presidents: Harmonies and Discords of the First Hundred Years (New York: Macmillan, 1975).