Minstrel performers: Were they completely against the North and the Freedom of Slaves?

Working on my literature review, I have dived in my book titled Blacking it up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America by Robert Toll. The purpose of this book, as the author explains, is to look at the questions that most scholars have about this time period, such as where did this type of minstrelsy come from, why was blackface minstrelsy so popular for so long, and of course why did entertainers see the need to perform blackface in the first place. While blackface minstrelsy began twenty years before the civil war, it hit it's height during the war itself, where it was able to feed off the efforts of the abolitionist in the North, and the slaves and their owners in the South.

One of the areas I am looking at looks at whether or not the minstrel performers were for the South, as one might imagine, or whether they could have been for the North. Some of the music expresses that there might be have been a mixture, some performers portraying and aiding the South against the emancipation, some supporting the efforts of the Northerners for emancipation. Toll believes that there might have been a shift in belief, and that many of them were simply supporting the one who was winning at the time.

For the most part, he believes that a shift occurred, stating that “Although they were completely opposed to emancipation at first...had to admit that blacks were earning their freedom by fighting and dying for the Union and the American Creed. Furthermore, as the frustrating war dragged on...they became increasingly vindictive of the South, gloating over each victory and delighting in the news of Sherman burning his way across the confederacy” (117). The rest continues, using the example of the famous piece “Babylon is fallen” to portray that not only did the minstrelsy performers support the emancipation of slaves, they also had allies with several of them, even though they didn't fully support every idea that the Northerners had.