I'm not working at the moment
min ovral 28 "It was written before the Emancipation Proclamation, so it's prospective of all of that," Wilentz says. "It was actually being sung on the blackface minstrel stage. So, you have white guys in blackface, celebrating the end of slavery and the skedaddling of the master, who they make fun of. This is a great thing about American culture, particularly in this period. The inversions of race, of politics, of what's going on, all sung to a very rousing tune, is remarkable."