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California House

from Devil Bug's Dream by The Payroll Union

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about

For many white Philadelphians ‘the millennium of abolition’ lay in racial-mixing. The mob at Pennsylvania Hall and John Campbell both denounced the ‘amalgamation’ of blacks and whites. Thus in October 1849, when Moyamensing’s white gangs heard the black proprietor of the California House had married a white woman, they made the short journey into the city proper to attack the tavern. The battle that ensued pitted white ‘Killers’ and firemen against the building’s black defenders.

lyrics

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.

credits

from Devil Bug's Dream, released August 15, 2019

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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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