Stephen Collins Foster (1826–1864) was this country's first great songwriter and has been called "America's Troubadour." His songs reflected the social consciousness of the new nation. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1826. Foster proved his musical talent early by playing the flute at the age of four, and completed his first composition, "The Tioga Waltz," at the age of fifteen. Foster wrote more than two hundred songs, including "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races," "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair," "Old Folks at Home," "Beautiful Dreamer," and many others still familiar today.

Foster originally became famous writing blackface minstrel songs, which mimicked African-American music. But as a result of living in Pittsburgh—a main hub on the Underground Railroad—and being exposed to the ideas of abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Martin Delaney, the first African-American U.S. Army major, Foster developed a profound empathy for African Americans that is evident in his later songs.

During his lifetime Foster received only slightly over $15,000 in royalties for all of his songs, which would be worth millions today. He was nearly penniless at the time of his early death in 1864 at the age of thirty-seven. Yet his music lives on with an appeal that is not only American, but universal.