Freedom Journey by Edythe Ann Quinn

Author:Edythe Ann Quinn [Quinn, Edythe Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, Middle Atlantic (DC; DE; MD; NJ; NY; PA), Civil War Period (1850-1877), Social Science, Ethnic Studies, African American Studies
ISBN: 9781438455389
Google: 81F5BgAAQBAJ
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2015-02-01T00:26:47+00:00

Sidebar 10

Van Amburgh’s Circus

When Walt Whitman exclaimed in 1856 that “The circus is a national institution,” he was not exaggerating its central place in the nation’s imagination and cultural experience for whites and blacks. African American men of the Twentieth Regiment, USCI, came from a great diversity of rural villages, small towns and cities, even southern plantations and ports, but many had enjoyed this common entertainment, in particular Van Amburgh’s Circus. For some, simply seeing the huge circus posters with drawings of wild animals and costumed performers may have been as close as they got to the exciting extravaganza. As bystanders, they might have watched the circus noisily parade down the main street of town. Some might have even earned a dollar or two unloading the circus train or setting up tents, and the luckiest gained admission, even if they were segregated from ringside. And if these men had never seen it for themselves, around their campfires they heard their comrades’ stories of the exotic animals and daring performances. Thus, along with a staple collection of spirituals and patriotic songs, this tune became popular around the campfires and with the work crews of the Twentieth USCI. Van Amburgh’s Circus also carries its own history for the Civil War era, as well as the ironic fact that the international star and lion tamer, Isaac Van Amburgh was born in Fishkill, New York.1

The trade journal for the entertainment industry, New York Clipper, tracked the many circus and menagerie shows as they crisscrossed the country in the mid-nineteenth century. The Van Amburgh shows, which traveled the country for almost forty years, combined circus attractions with a menagerie of exotic animals, offering admittance to both for a single ticket price. In 1860, the Clipper reported that after “traveling in the Southern country all last winter,” a Van Amburgh show would appear in April in Hartford, Connecticut, and “in its menagerie was “the war elephant Hannibal.” In May, a Van Amburgh show would open in Chicago; in Boston for Fourth of July, in Vermont in August, continuing on to Schenectady and Buffalo in September. According to a report in the New York Clipper, May 4, 1861, immediately after the firing on Fort Sumter, the Civil War interfered with performances of Van Amburg’s shows. With “the excitement gaining ground all over the country, their business fell off to a loss to the managers every day,” due to their volunteering for the war. Entering the border state of Maryland, which had not seceded but definitely harbored southern sympathies, Isaac A. Van Amburg found trouble. As a Union man, he would not fly any flag other than the Stars and Stripes over his tents. He ran into difficulty in Talbout County with the state’s attorney warning him away, an order he immediately obeyed. He told the Clipper’s reporter that if business did not improve, the troupe planned “to find a good barn, and plenty of grass, and stow away their stock until the present troublesome times are settled.”2

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