author
George Washington Clark
1812–1899
An antislavery compiler and songwriter, he is best remembered for gathering stirring music for reform movements before the Civil War. His surviving books also show a later turn toward family history, preserving his own branch of the Clark family in print.
1 Audiobook
The liberty minstrel
by George Washington Clark
About the author
George Washington Clark was born in Bangor, Maine, in 1812 and died in 1899. He is known chiefly for compiling The Liberty Minstrel (1845), a collection of antislavery songs, and The Free Soil Minstrel (1848), which brought together music and verse tied to the reform politics of the era.
Those books suggest a writer and editor interested in public causes as much as in literature, using songs as a way to spread ideas and build community. Another work associated with him, On the Constitution (1860), also connects his name with the slavery debate in the years just before the Civil War.
Late in life, Clark published The History and Genealogy of Our Branch of the Clark Family and Its Connections... (1898), showing a different side of his work: careful family remembrance and record-keeping. Taken together, his books preserve both the spirit of antebellum reform and a personal effort to save family history for later generations.