An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 6 | SONGS OF SOCIAL REFORM AND WAR 151

Morris’s poem for “Woodman, Spare That Tree” is written in the voice of a

man hailing a woodcutter who is ready to swing into action:

Woodman spare that tree!

Touch not a single bough;

In youth it shelter’d me,

And I’ll protect it now;

’Twas my forefather’s hand

That placed it near his cot[tage],

There, woodman, let it stand,

Thy axe shall harm it not!

Russell directs that the song be sung “with much feeling and expression.” After a

long piano introduction, much in the bel canto style of the Italian opera compos-

ers Bellini and Donizetti, the melody is cast in four sections, aabc.

The threat of loss hangs over “Woodman, Spare That Tree”: the prospect that

an ancient, majestic thing, the site of family memories, will be destroyed. Rus-

sell apparently milked the song for all it was worth, sometimes offering a spoken

prologue tying it to a real-life incident. The text leaves the tree’s fate unresolved,

and Russell used that uncertainty to create suspense in concerts. After one per-

formance, he wrote, an audience member, “in a very excited voice, called [out],

‘Was the tree spared, sir?’ ‘It was,’ I said. ‘Thank God for that,’ he answered, with

a sigh of relief.”

The theme of yearning and loss also pervades some blackface minstrel songs,

including “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” and “Old Folks at Home.” Favorite

parlor songs on the same subject include “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,”

“Silver Threads among the Gold,” and “When You and I Were Young.”

SONGS OF SOCIAL REFORM AND WAR

Equipped with a piano and supplied by a fl ourishing, resourceful sheet music trade,

the American parlor also became an arena for the singing of operatic numbers, as

well as religious, comic, and topical songs. Moreover, during the early and middle

1800s, movements took shape to abolish slavery and to reform the way Americans

worshiped, their drinking habits, and the treatment of women in society. Popu-

lar song was enlisted in support of these movements. Indeed, the leading singers

of activist songs in the pre–Civil War years were the Hutchinsons of Milford, New

Hampshire, who began singing together for pleasure and then found that they

could make a career out of it. Their reform music has caught recent historians’

attention, partly because it anticipates the work of later protest singers such as Pete

Seeger and the young Bob Dylan (see chapter 17). But the Hutchinsons were primar-

ily entertainers who made their mark singing music of the day for paying audiences.

THE HUTCHINSON FAMILY AND

SONGS OF SOCIAL REFORM

The Hutchinsons were inspired to enter the public arena in 1840 after attend-

ing a concert of the Rainer family, a traveling troupe from Switzerland who

performed traditional songs in native costume. In 1842 the Hutchinson Family

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