1. |
Pennsylvania Hall
08:46
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Down to the city I carry my wax and canvas (1)
There’s a gathering of people all around this new house
A mixture of colour that I could never imagine
Fixed in my mind is a red I wish to recreate
A man with a tall hat stands and points with fury (2)
Fellows three feet away do not know how to speak to him
but in their sentiments they are for the same thing
For there are many white women talking to black men (3)
A stone gets thrown and a scream from a gentle lady (4)
A cheer from a portion of rabble but the gentleman isn’t stirring
Serene in his rage and composed like a portrait
The sounds of the voices are starting to rise like a chamber
A young boy pisses in the door and the laughter rings out
The sky is covered in a grey and purple glow now
and without signal windows smash and the door goes down
Men pour in with a shout of “hunt them down”
We’re out at Pennsylvania Hall
Four days and it’s gone (5)
We’re all watching on
Watching on
A crack in the gas pipe spills out a hiss like a low snake
A white light blinds out the windows and the awe of the gasp breaks
Yellow licks write out words in the sky like prophecy
The ending of all that we have built in its inevitability
Running like fools from the hall, they’re beaten as they go
Men parrot phrases they took from a sheet to make them feel bold
The crack and the crumble that tumbles down from this deathly show
If I could just capture the smoke before it swallows up the brick and the bone
The hose is directed upon the building next door (6)
Cheers rise up as the flames do the same as it falls to the floor
The fear and the glee in the faces are mixing up the colours and the sound
I’ve been in the city but a month now it’s burning down
The lick and the flick of the sparks spill out from the scene to the page
The gentleman’s gone now the laughter and noise follows out from the stage
Who can imagine the terror - is this the start or the end?
Oh what a thrill, what a fright, this modern world wills to be free of the night
Merchants, tailors, weavers and all
Draymen, stevedores, the rich and the poor
Gather round the glow of the fiery furnace
Revel in destruction, feed the flames
Business is business - we all shake hands
We’re tied to the binding cord
back to workshop, back to the factory
back to the dock with a cheer
back to the press with its dark black print
pushed to the paper so clear
The voices are deafening
Footnotes
(1) John Caspar Wild, a Swiss-born painter who had recently returned to Philadelphia. His lithograph of Pennsylvania Hall’s destruction can be seen on the poster for this evening’s event.
(2) The ‘tall hat’ indicates the rioters included men of ‘property and standing’: violence transcended class.
(3) Fear of racial mixing – ‘amalgamation’ – ran deep in white society.
(4) Women played a leading role in the abolitionist movement: the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women met in the doomed Hall.
(5) The Hall was destroyed just four days after its official opening.
(6) Philadelphia’s firemen were made up of companies of volunteers, many of whom opposed abolitionists and made little effort to save the Hall.
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2. |
Paris of America
03:10
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Good gentleman stroller
Take your lady down Broad Street (1)
In the Paris of America
Regard the fountains and the finery
But don’t spark your imagination
For your fears are just around the corner
Where there are riots and disease
Savages walk the streets
Brawling Irish thieves
Down on Bedford Street
Well you should see it for yourself good sir
Let me take you to the dens and the hovels
No need to see the wild west (2)
You could lose your life on Bedford Street
There’s a vice for every degradation
So beware a friendly invitation
They breed like a disease
Flourish and fill the streets
See the bawdy houses breathe
down on Bedford Street
Come with me down Sorrow’s Circuit (3)
Through the grog shops and the barrooms
The savagery of a scalping Redman (4)
Ain’t nothing for our Philadelphian ruffian
A war of extermination
Is being threatened by that “Jacobin club” (5)
So as you curtsy on the boulevard
Plans are being hatched on Bedford Street
To build the barricades on Broad
You’ll be the first up against the wall
With a rag stuffed in your mouth
In front of a baying angry crowd
Swinging from a beam
down on Bedford Street
Footnotes
(1) As in Paris, the ‘promenade’ along genteel boulevards acquired almost ritualised meaning for the urban elite of American cities.
(2) One paper at the time described the streets gangs of the southern suburbs as ‘our mighty tribes of Philadelphia Indians’ - a horde of ‘would-be savages and can’t-be men!’
(3) The title of a book by a Protestant missionary on Bedford Street.
(4) A reference to the perceived barbarity of Native Americans who were infamous for removing enemies’ scalps.
(5) The Jacobins in the French Revolution were known for their radical politics and penchant for guillotining rivals. An 1847 novella compared the Killers - a Moyamensing street gang - to the club. Fears that the violence of the French Revolution would spread to the American city haunted wealthy citizens.
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3. |
From Every Still
04:31
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From every still, from every height
The demons turn amongst the night
The Killers’ call (1), the raging squall
From Kensington to Moyamensing (2)
Fires they fill the sky (3)
Drunkards howl to the night
Like a ring around the city’s sights
Amazed that we’re still alive
The ice has gone, the city’s strong
Pulsing with heat just to swallow and eat
The Bedford beggar, the liquor store swagger
That feeds off the flesh of the drunk and depressed
The theatre roars with great applause (4)
While smoke it sings into our doors
The writer rages ‘gainst boosters and players
While weavers they raise up their ‘blood or bread’ (5) banners
At Eastern State, the city jail (6)
They meditate, they bleed and pray
Around the carousel, gangs dance and drink (7)
And the beatings break up to the laughter and sing...
Footnotes
(1) The Killers were a Moyamensing street gang loosely affiliated to the Irish-American wing of the Democratic Party. Probably the most notorious of Philadelphia’s several dozen gangs (others included the Bouncers and the Schuylkill Rangers), the Killers counted William McMullen - subject of ‘Bull’ on the sister album album, Paris of America - among their members.
(2) Kensington was a burgeoning industrial suburb about a mile north of the old downtown; George Shiffler (see the first song on Paris of America) died there in the 1844 riots. Moyamensing, just south of Philadelphia proper, was the poorest district in the metropolis, and provided a home to Irish immigrants and African-Americans.
(3) Open fires and wooden buildings made mid nineteenth-century cities highly combustible. The Great Fire of Chicago in 1871 destroyed more than three square miles.
(4) Theatres were combustible sites themselves in the pre-Civil War city. In 1844, a riot nearly broke out at the Chestnut Street Theater after its owner cancelled the premiere of George Lippard’s scurrilous, radical Quaker City (see ‘Wo Unto Sodom’ from Paris of America).
(5) A common cry among the poor in times of hardship.
(6) Eastern State Penitentiary: a prison built by well-intentioned Quakers who believed solitary confinement would purify the inmate’s soul. Prisoners went mad until the regime was relaxed. Not actually the city jail: that honour fell to Moyamensing Prison, several miles to the south.
(7) A reference to the Flying Horses Riot of 1834, where a white gang attacked African-Americans on the city’s southern border.
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4. |
California House
03:02
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A firebell acts as a wedding chime and then
The fiddler strikes a tune in California House (1)
The pale white Irish skin pressed underneath his chin
The sound of volleys from South and 8th (2) commence
Underneath this boarding house
The gambling tables turn to reveal
Ammunition for the fight (3)
This is all we have to survive here
The competition for the hours at the mill (4)
The dexterous uses of a brickbat in your hand (5)
The song strikes up again from Irish lore they sing
The Hearts of Oak who beat their landlord to a pulp (6)
The burning barrel lights
Filled up with tar and spite
The gas lights fireworks
That give the crowd a cheer
The fire company
Aims all its energy
At the adjacent buildings (7)
Anything but us
No mercy
The ashes in his hands where we did drink and dance
The place that we once knew as California House
Footnotes
(1) A tavern owned by an African-American man who married a white woman.
(2) A block or so away from the California House, and just yards from Bedford Street. From 1844 onwards, Philadelphia’s rowdy gangs were not afraid to use firearms.
(3) African-Americans fought back. One free black - a fugitive slave and operative on the runaways’ Underground Railroad - later boasted he had ‘fired the first shot on the Moyamensing Killers…. The women tore up all the sidewalk, so that the men could get bricks and stones to fight with.’
(4) Black and Irish workers vied for jobs, though most historians accept that competition in the labour market is not enough to make sense of the ferocity of racial violence in the era.
(5) The melee weapon of choice in mid nineteenth-century riots.
(6) An eighteenth-century rural protest society in Ireland.
(7) As at Pennsylvania Hall, volunteer firemen would save only what they wanted to save.
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5. |
Wo Unto Sodom Pt. 2
03:39
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6. |
The 6th
04:50
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We are the 6th and we
We march from Camp William Penn
We formed at Master
To Chestnut, Pine, Walnut and Dock (1)
From every window
A cheer, a song, a handkerchief
And every word is kind
Rapprochements for the cold hearts (2)
There’s no flinch
Not a flicker in our eyes
There’s no fleeing
You’ll never know this bitter pride
We are the Union
We are the loyal soldier (3)
Remember ‘38 (4)
They burned us from the building
I think of ‘42 (5)
We marched on that day too
Then they had jeered and beaten us
Now listen to them roar
I look for Johnny Reb (6)
Upon the pink horizon
At Washington we stopped (7)
To rest our weary legs
And waiting on us there
were curious whites with smiles
You left your homes to fight
To strike a blow for liberty
To aid this government
And we serve you with great pride
Footnotes
(1) Street names.
(2) Reports from the march suggest that the 6th received some abuse in the heart of McMullen’s Fourth Ward.
(3) Loyal service to the Union became the basis for black claims to political rights after the Civil War.
(4) The burning of Pennsylvania Hall.
(5) The Lombard Street riot. African-Americans peacefully celebrating the anniversary of abolition of slavery in the West Indies were attacked by a predominantly Irish mob.
(6) A slang term for Southerners - specifically Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.
(7) A Moyamensing street.
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The Payroll Union Sheffield, UK
Americana band with an obsession for American history. Recently released Paris of America, an album on violence and disorder in antebellum Philadelphia. Released 2 EPs - Underfed & Underpaid and Your Obedient Servant - and our debut album came out 19th January 2013. ... more
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