"Another big favorite of Lincoln's was a kind of "crossover" artist, Louis Moreau Gottschalk. A Southerner by birth, born in New Orleans, Gottschalk was a one-of-a-kind composer, a virtuoso pianist and, perhaps surprisingly, a supporter of the Union cause. One of his most famous pieces is The Union (Fantasy on Patriotic Airs). When you listen to the beginning of the piece, it sounds like any flashy, 19th-century European virtuoso piano piece. But then Gottschalk launches into the tunes we all know, treating them in his own inimitable way."