Just wonderin’. It was one of the three (together with Columbus’ first voyage, and the Revolutionary War) most important events in American history, yet “America Rock” never covered it, AFAIK.
I’m confused. Was ‘America Rock’ some kind of 70s educational cartoon series, like Schoolhouse Rock?
I thought it was a WWF wrestler, from the 80s.
It was part of Schoolhouse Rock, which had four main themes: Grammar Rock (“Conjunction Junction,” “Interjections”) Multiplication Rock (“Three Is A Magic Number,” “Figure Eight”) Science Rock (“Interplanet Janet”) and America/History Rock (“No More Kings,” “I’m Just A Bill,” “The Preamble”).
And now that you mention it, it does seem a little strange that SR never took on the Civil War…but maybe slavery would be a little heavy for a lighthearted educational song.
That and the South takes the Civil War very personally and this was a cartoon for broadcast TV.
Wiki has a list of Schoolhouse Rock episodes, of course.
You can see that the original set of American Rock episodes were shown around the run-up to the Bicentennial (including everyone’s favorite - “I’m Just A Bill”), so I believe they wanted to avoid controversy and include rah-rah USA shows (yes, including Manifest Destiny ala “Elbow Room” - hey, those were different times). Later on they seem to have added new episodes which I hadn’t seen at the time (not being ten years old anymore) such as “I’m Gonna Send Your Vote To College”.
However, a lot of Schoolhouse Rock episodes can be found one way or another on YouTube, and so I can state the 1996 “Tyrannosaurus Debt” gives a rather slanted view of debt worthy of Newt Gingrich…
Hmm, they’ve added episodes as late as 2009 - too bad they didn’t add the OP’s civil war episode in 2013, on the 150th anniversery of Gettysburg. I bet they could have pulled it off.
IMO most Semi-Creepy Episode - the 1979 “Telegraph Line”, which features the Human Nervous System represented as a set of “amputed” hands and feet, pined down in their normal anatomically locations relevative to each other, and hooked up via wire to a TV monitor in the location of the brain. And why would children from the late 1970s be all that familar with telegrams anyway?
In a time long ago but not forgotten
when the south used slaves to pick their cotton,
and the Northern folks set up factories.
States up North banned slavery
States down South did not agree
And decided it was time to leave the country.
(Chorus)
It was emancipation, a proclamation,
The president’s plan to end slavery
Emancipation, in this fledgling nation,
that changed the course of our history
The president was against the separation
Said we could not stand as a divided nation
And sent the Army south to keep the peace
They drafted troops and marched night and day
burning everything in their way
to show the Southern states why they should stay
(Chorus)
It was emancipation, a proclamation,
The president’s plan to end slavery
Emancipation, in this fledgling nation,
that changed the course of our history
As the south, both cities and plantations,
Lay scorched and burning from this desecration,
Rebels started planning an assassination
The target was the nation’s leader
And one April night at Ford’s theater
John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln dead
(Chorus)
It was emancipation, a proclamation,
The president’s plan to end slavery
Emancipation, in this fledgling nation,
that changed the course of our history
If you just wrote that on the fly, that is pretty awesome!
Unless it was penned by neoConfederates and revisionists, in which case it would begin
'Lots of black folk all came here on boats
and went up to the already here folks
They said 'We need work, anything we can fetch ya?
And the white folks said ‘Oh sure, you betcha!’
We got cotton and we got tobacco
You can pick it all and when you back, oh
Just speak our language, cause when in Rome,
and you can live right in back of our very own home!
And so it was for two hundred years
The Africans had job security and no fears
And the white folks got their cotton picked
And everyone was happy as a fat dog’s ticks!"
Then the lines about the villainous northerners breaking up the happiness.
Well, in Mother Necessity, one verse goes:
“Oh, things were rotten in the land of cotton
Until Whitney made the cotton gin
Now old times there will soon be forgotten
For it did the work of a hundred men”
Of course, when it says “Men”, read “Slaves”. And I’d say things were still pretty rotten down there for other reasons anyways, and the cotton gin didn’t make work any easier on certain parties.
I think that’s the closest the series comes anywhere near the topic.
Yep, if you buy the DVD, all of the Rocks are divided into their separate playlists. Money Rock was the new set made in the early 90s, Earth Rock was the set made in 2009.