In ballad writing he did for the United States what Watteau did for painting in France.

As Watteau found a Flemish school in France and left a French school stamped forever, so Foster found the United States a home for imitations of English, Irish, German and Italian songs, and left a native ballad form and melodic strain forever impressed upon it as pure American.
"He was like Watteau in more than that.

Watteau took the elegancies and fripperies of the corrupt French court and fixed them in art immortal, as if the moment had been arrested and held in actual motion.

Foster took the curious and melancholy spectacle of African slavery at its height, superimposed by the most elegant and picturesque social manners this country has known, at the moment the institution was at its zenith.
He saw the glamor, the humor, the tragedy, the contrasts, the emotional depths--that lay unplumbed beneath it all.

He fixed it there for all time, for all hearts and minds everywhere.