How Does Emmett Changed My Understanding Of The Civil War?

Daniel Decatur Emmett was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio in the fall of 1815. Emmett was a composer who worked as a drummer in a traveling circus, then a minstrel troupe after being discharged from the Army because he falsified his age to enlist. Emmett wrote many of what are now considered to be Confederate anthems, “…much to the chagrin of Emmett who was anything but a Southern sympathizer…” Emmett wrote these songs as walk-arounds, a dance number that was performed at the end of a show that featured the entire company of musicians in the minstrel troupe. The intended audience of this song in particular are the people of the North, because the song is about Ulysses S. Grant’s rise in ranks to becoming the Commanding General of the Union Army as well as Union victory in the Civil War. Emmett’s song is encouraging support of the Union by reminding the people of the North what a great job Grant

The North was just as dedicated to the war as the South was and both sides were responsible for their own propaganda. I knew that Grant was an important figure during and after the Civil War, as a General and later as President, but I had no idea that the North had such strong feelings for him and the amount that he did for the North. I don’t remember learning much about Grant in my schooling in regards to the Civil War, only that he was the General that Robert E. Lee surrendered to that caused the Civil War to finally come to an end. Much of my Civil War education previous to this class was focused on Abraham Lincoln and how brutal the South was during the War, not about how the war was fought and what the importance of certain people were. This document definitely gave me a new outlook on the Civil War from the Northern