This stern old Southern Cavalryman seems to be the most unlikely character in the history of early southern rural music, that almost a century later formed a major part in building the house of Rock 'n' Roll. Sam Sweeny of Appomatox V. A. accompanied cavalry General J. E. B. Stuart for three years of campaigning, playing a five string banjo while singing songs like "Jine the Cavalry" praising the military success of the rebel horsemen.
His brother Joel Walker Sweeny claimed to have invented the five string banjo, though it is much more possible that he saw it being played by black workers at the Sweeny ironworks. He soon took the novelty instrument to the stage as part of a Minstrel Show, that was so successful, it would eventually cross the Atlantic to perform in Europe. The troupe even made it to play to Queen Victoria.
Minstrel Shows were a tradition that was, as Nick Tosches put it, that was born in the North and died in the South. White performers, blackening their faces with cork, would to parodies on negroe life of the south. What began as a compassion with the oppressed ended as a rip-off of black culture.
Sweeny never made it to any fame outside the Army and died of smallpox three month before his General was shot.