Campaign song

For many years national campaigns included itinerant stumpspeakers, live animals, fife-and-drum corps, red fire, floats, transparencies and rousing mass meetings in courthouses and town halls.

Should baneful war approach our shore, His gallant sword again, Will strew with prostrate, fallen The deadly battle plain Whig songwriters typically portrayed their candidates as "heroes" and denounced the Democratic "villains".

[7] The Whig party responded to Democratic criticism regarding Harrison's old age and rugged character with songs that extolled the values of "plain living" and pastoral life.

[8] By contrast, the Whigs blamed incumbent Democratic president Martin Van Buren for causing the Panic of 1837 financial crisis due to his indulgence and "passion for expensive champagne in the White House".

While promises of the annexation of Texas and the westward expansion of slavery were prominent issues in this election, historian Gavin James Campbell argues that music helped create an "enthusiastic, committed and amused electorate".

[12] Familiar English tunes such as "Yankee Doodle" and "God Save the King" were appropriated with new lyrics that related to the American experience to create a "parody" in strophic form.

[19] Campaign songs were oft used as an artistic ritual to propagate the political and cultural ideologies of a hopeful candidate to the general population and attract new people to their cause.

[21] The group performativity of most early campaign songs would often push individuals to conform and submit to popular chants, creating bonds of allegiance with other members of the crowd and the candidate they were venerating.

[28] In early America, no government entity existed which in any way influenced the production of songwriters and composers, short of their role in inspiring creators' lyricism, removing any limitation on truth, censorship or sensationalised material.

[29] To combat this freedom exercised by opponents, politicians, like Benjamin Harrison in his 1888 presidential race against Grover Cleveland, responded in kind to similarly provoke partisan reaction.

Historians have noted that certain campaign "songs trumpeted the virtues of some and assaulted the failings of others",[31] as well as a penchant for "name-calling and grosser trickery"[32] instilled in American conscious of the time.

One such example was James K. Polk's campaign songs during the 1844 general election, which included references to Native American leader "approval" despite voting rights and enfranchisement being liminal at the time.

While recognised and sung as such, campaign songs were also derided in social discourse as being a classifiably political affair, with accusations levelled at both the 'Whig' and 'Democratic' parties of being disingenuous in their employment of highly charged rhetoric.