Coleman notes that Confederate authorities also suppressed songs suspected of being pro-Union in their territory. That was a continuation of a much larger, decades long of suppression of abolitionist sentiments in the slave states before Southern secession. And attempted so far as possible to suppress them even in non-slve states. This was a real and highly visible way that slavery was a threat to the democratic rights of white citizens in the United States. It wasn't just a rhetorical flourish when opponents of slavery complained about slavery endangering the democracy that did exist for the white population - or at least for white men, if we consider that democracy actually existed only citizens with the right to vote.
Coleman's essay recounts some of the early nineteenth popular discussions of the teaching and persuasive power of music. If we take artistic/aesthetic considerations seriously, it would be difficult to determine specific ideological or political content of music itself. Johann Strauss, Sr.'s famous "Radetsky March" is named in honor of an Austrian field marshal who, among other things, crushed the pro-democracy, pro-independence revolutionary forces in Italy in 1848-49. "Radetzky served as governor of Austria’s kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia from 1850 to 1857, ruling those territories with an iron hand." (Joseph, Graf Radetzky Britannica Online 2020)
But listeners hearing the march are not normally thinking, ah, this music makes me want to go smash democracy in Italy. But Britannica notes, Strauss "wrote the popular Radetzky March in his honour but was reproached by liberal critics for having done so." So it wasn't regarded from the start as apolitical.
Oh, then there's this Faulknerian development, i.e., "The past is never dead," etc. (Kevin Clarke, De-Nazifying The “Radetzky March” At The 2020 Vienna New Year’s Concert Operetta Research Center 12/31/2019):
The old version that has been performed for decades – in the name of “tradition” – is a version created by composer and glowing Nazi supporter Leopold Weninger (1879-1940). This was confirmed by the Vienna Philharmonic press office earlier this month and reported on by various German newspapers.Yes, we've been hearing the Storm Trooper arrangement all these years!
As a consequence the board of directors of the Vienna Philharmonic, represented by Daniel Froschauer, commissioned the music archivist of the orchestra to produce a new version. “This version will be used from now on,” Froschauer said. “On January 1st the audience in the golden hall may clap along to a version of the Radetzky March that was created as a joint venture with the Vienna Philharmonic and that is not contaminated by a ‘brown’ past.”
The arrangement by Leopold Weninger, that millions listened to via TV every year, was first introduced to the concert series in 1946 by legendary conductor Joseph Krips. Though Mr. Krips was certainly not a Nazi, Weninger was. He famously arranged marches for the “Sturmabteilung” (SA). He also turned the 1848 march by Johann Strauss senior into a very militant affair, which helped make the number popular in Nazi times. He added a special snare drum to make it all sound even more pointed, removed ornaments, and “fixed” the tune in the middle section. He also made the sound more “massive” and overwhelming, more in sync with the times. At least this is how various newspapers described the matter.
But how does all this relate to Confederate music in Union-occupied places like New Orleans? Coleman writes:
In important ways, the existence of musical protest, particularly from women and children, and the idea that it required suppression exposed the limits of Union military power, challenged the social order, and confounded expectations that Union success on the battlefield would translate into Confederate defeat on the home front. At another level, however, evidence of Union attempts to regulate Confederate musical expression also underlines the extent to which these outcomes were a product of the Union’s basic inability to separate the acceptability of Confederate patriotism from its treasonous implications. Music showcased just how difficult it was for the Union to counter the appeal of Confederate cultural symbols without simultaneously giving ammunition to charges of Union tyranny. This history, then, speaks to the deeply emotional terrain on which legal contests over Civil War loyalty played out and attests to the power of those emotions to frame the substance and significance of treason.No, preventing people from singing songs, even treasonous ones, is not something that the US government today would do. Even in countries like Germany and Austria where there are explicit anti-Nazi laws, radical right bands promoting neo-nazi propaganda themes in their music can still legally perform. Although if the start flying swastika flags and marching around doing the Hitler salute, that could get dicey for them.
But before we take this as an incidence of Union tyranny, a reality-check is due. New Orleans under Union Army control was under a military occupation in the middle of a civil war! Of course, the occupation authorities were going to frown on anti-American propaganda and gatherings with possible subversive intent. Because, you know, it was a military occupation!
I'm struck by Coleman's framing in the phrase about "the Union’s basic inability to separate the acceptability of Confederate patriotism from its treasonous implications." The Confederacy was an act of treason! The Confederate states seceded from the Union. They completely rejected the application of American law and the American Constitution in their territory. None of the Confederate governments or their subsidiary branches like municipalities were legitimate governments at all from the Union view.
In my previous post in this series, I posted a YouTube video of a Confederate song from a 1960 album from Folkways Music, a left-leaning record publisher, an album which had versions of both popular Union and Rebel songs from the Civil War period. I'm confident that no one reading it will mistake that post for pro-Confederate. And nobody is going to get arrested in 2020 for singing it.
But understanding what those songs meant in the context of civil war and occupation in 1861-5 is a whole different thing.
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