During the American Civil War, music played a prominent role on each side of the conflict, Union (the North) and Confederate (the South). On the battlefield, different instruments including bugles, drums, and fifes were played to issue marching orders or sometimes simply to boost the morale of one's fellow soldiers. Singing was also employed not only as a recreational activity but as a release from the inevitable tensions that come with fighting in a war. In camp, music was a diversion away from the bloodshed, helping the soldiers deal with homesickness and boredom. Soldiers of both sides often engaged in recreation with musical instruments, and when the opposing armies were near each other, sometimes the bands from both sides of the conflict played against each other on the night before a battle.
Each side had its particular favorite tunes, while some music was enjoyed by Northerners and Southerners alike, as exemplified by United States PresidentAbraham Lincoln's love of "Dixie", the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy. To this day, many of the songs are sung when a patriotic piece is required. The war's music also inspired music artists such as Lynyrd Skynyrd and Elvis Presley.
The Civil War was an important period in the development of American music. During the Civil War, when soldiers from across the country commingled, the multifarious strands of American music began to cross-fertilize each other, a process that was aided by the burgeoning railroad industry and other technological developments that made travel and communication easier. Army units included individuals from across the country, and they rapidly traded tunes, instruments, and techniques. The songs that arose from this fusion were "the first American folk music with discernible features that can be considered unique to America".[1] The war was an impetus for the creation of many songs that became and remained wildly popular; the songs were aroused by "all the varied passions (that the Civil War inspired)" and "echoed and re-echoed" every aspect of the war. John Tasker Howard has claimed that the songs from this era "could be arranged in proper sequence to form an actual history of the conflicts: its events, its principal characters, and the ideals and principles of the opposing sides".[2]
In addition to, and in conjunction with, popular songs with patriotic fervor, the Civil War era also produced a great body of brass band pieces, from both the North and the South,[3] as well as other military musical traditions like the bugle call "Taps".
In May 1861, the United States War Department officially approved that every regiment of infantry and artillery could have a brass band with 24 members, while a cavalry regiment could have one of sixteen members. The Confederate army would also have brass bands. This was followed by a Union army regulation of July 1861 requiring every infantry, artillery, or cavalry company to have two musicians and for there to be a twenty-four man band for every regiment.[4] The July 1861 requirement was ignored as the war dragged on, as riflemen were more needed than musicians. In July 1862 the brass bands of the Union were disassembled by the adjutant general, although the soldiers that comprised them were sometimes re-enlisted and assigned to musician roles. A survey in October 1861 found that 75% of Union regiments had a band.[4] By December 1861 the Union army had 28,000 musicians in 618 bands; a ratio of one soldier out of 41 who served the army was a musician, and the Confederate army was believed to have a similar ratio.[5] Musicians were often given special privileges. Union general Philip Sheridan gave his cavalry bands the best horses and special uniforms, believing "Music has done its share, and more than its share, in winning this war".[6]
Musicians on the battlefield were drummers and buglers, with an occasional fifer. Buglers had to learn forty-nine separate calls just for infantry, with more needed for cavalry. These ranged from battle commands to calls for meal time.[7] Some of these required musicians were drummer boys not even in their teens, which allowed an adult man to instead be a foot soldier. The most notable of these under aged musicians was John Clem, also known as "Johnny Shiloh". Union drummers wore white straps to support their drums. The drum and band majors wore baldrics to indicate their status; after the war, this style would be emulated in civilian bands. Drummers would march to the right of a marching column. Similar to buglers, drummers had to learn 39 different beats: fourteen for general use, and 24 for marching cadence. However, buglers were given greater importance than drummers.[8]
On the battlefield
Whole songs were sometimes played during battles. The survivors of the disastrous Pickett's Charge returned under the tune "Nearer My God to Thee".[9] At the Battle of Five Forks, Union musicians under orders from Sheridan played Stephen Foster's minstrel song "Nelly Bly" while being shot at on the front lines.[9]Samuel P. Heintzelman, the commander of the III Corps, saw many of his musicians standing at the back lines at the Battle of Williamsburg, and ordered them to play anything.[9] Their music rallied the Union forces, forcing the Confederate to withdraw. It was said that music was the equivalent of "a thousand men" on one's side. Robert E. Lee himself said, "I don't think we could have an army without music."[10]
Sometimes, musicians were ordered to leave the battlefront and assist the surgeons. One notable time was the 20th Maine's musicians at Little Round Top. As the rest of the regiment were driving back wave after wave of Confederates, the musicians of the regiment were not just performing amputations, but doing it in a very quick manner.[11][12]
In camp
Locations of the different sides the night of the band duel before the Battle of Stones River.
Many soldiers brought musical instruments from home to pass the time at camp. Banjos, fiddles, and guitars were particularly popular. Aside from drums, the instruments Confederates played were either acquired before the war or imported, due to the lack of brass and the industry to make such instruments.[11][13]
Musical duels between the two sides were common, as they heard each other as the music traveled across the countryside. The night before the Battle of Stones River, bands from both sides dueled with separate songs until both sides started playing "Home! Sweet Home!", at which time soldiers on both sides started singing together as one.[14] A similar situation occurred in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the winter of 1862–63. On a cold afternoon, a Union band started playing Northern patriotic tunes; a Southern band responded by playing Southern patriotic tunes. This back and forth continued into the night, until at the end both sides played "Home! Sweet Home!" simultaneously, to the cheers of both sides' forces.[11] In a third instance, in the spring of 1863, the opposing armies were on the opposite sides of the Rappahannock River in Virginia, when the different sides played their patriotic tunes, and at taps one side played "Home! Sweet Home!", and the other joined in, creating "cheers" from both sides that echoed throughout the hilly countryside.[15]
The first song written for the war, "The First Gun Is Fired", was first published and distributed three days after the Battle of Fort Sumter. George F. Root, who wrote it, is said to have produced the most songs of anyone about the war, over thirty in total.[18] Lincoln once wrote a letter to Root, saying, "You have done more than a hundred generals and a thousand orators."[19] Other songs played an important role in convincing northern whites that African Americans were willing to fight and wanted freedom, for instance Henry Clay Work's 1883 "Babylon Is Fallen" and Charles Halpine's "Sambo's Right to Be Kilt".[20]
The southern states had long lagged behind northern states in producing common literature. With the advent of war, Southern publishers were in demand. These publishers, based largely in five cities (Charleston, South Carolina; Macon, Georgia; Mobile, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee; and New Orleans, Louisiana), produced five times more printed music than they did literature.[21]
In the Confederate States of America, "God Save the South" was the official national anthem. However, "Dixie" was the most popular.[17] United States President Abraham Lincoln said he loved "Dixie" and wanted to hear it played, saying "as we had captured the rebel army, we had also captured the rebel tune".[22] At an April 9, 1865, rally, the band director was surprised when Lincoln requested that the band play "Dixie". Lincoln said, "That tune is now Federal property ... good to show the rebels that, with us in power, they will be free to hear it again." The other prominent tune was "The Bonnie Blue Flag", which, like "Dixie", was written in 1861, unlike Union popular tunes which were written throughout the war.[23]
Music sung by African-Americans changed during the war. The theme of escape from bondage became especially important in spirituals sung by blacks, both by slaves singing among themselves on plantations and for free and recently freed blacks singing to white audiences. New versions of songs such as "Hail Mary", "Michael Row the Boat Ashore", and "Go Down Moses" emphasized the message of freedom and the rejection of slavery.[24] Many new slave songs were sung as well, the most popular being, "Many Thousands Go", which was frequently sung by slaves fleeing plantations to Union Army camps.[25] Several attempts were made to publish slave songs during the war. The first was the publishing of sheet music to "Go Down Moses" by Reverend L. C. Lockwood in December 1861 based on his experience with escaped slaves in Fort Monroe, Virginia, in September of that year. In 1863, the Continental Monthly published a sampling of spirituals from South Carolina in an article titled, "Under the Palmetto".[26]
The white colonel of the all-black First South Carolina, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, noted that when blacks knew that whites were listening, they changed the way they were sung, and historian Christian McWhiter noted that African Americans "used their music to reshape white perceptions and foster a new image of black culture as thriving and ready for freedom".[27] In Port Royal, escaped slaves learned the anthem, "America" in secret, never singing it in front of whites. When the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, a celebration was held, and in a surprise to white onlookers, contrabands began singing the anthem, using the song to express their new status.[28] The most popular white songs among slaves were "John Brown's Body" and H. C. Work's "Kingdom Coming",[29] and as the war continued, the lyrics African Americans sung changed, with vagueness and coded language dropped and including open expressions of their new roles as soldiers and citizens.[30]
Slave owners in the south responded by restricting singing on plantations and imprisoning singers of songs supporting emancipation or the North.[31] Confederate supporters also looked to music sung by slaves for signs of loyalty. Several Confederate regimental bands included slaves, and Confederates arranged slaves to sing and dance to show how happy they were. Slave performer Thomas Greene Bethune, known as Blind Tom, frequently played pro-Confederate songs such as "Maryland, My Maryland" and "Dixie" and dropped, "Yankee Doodle" from his performances.[32]
Different versions
Although certain songs were identified with one particular side of the war, sometimes the other would adapt the song for their use. A Southern revision of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was used, entitled "The Southern Cross". In an example of the different lyrics, where the "Banner" had "O say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave", the "Cross" had "'Tis the Cross of the South, which shall ever remain".[33] Another Confederate version of "The Star-Spangled Banner", called "The Flag of Secession", replaced the same verse with "and the flag of secession in triumph doth wave".[22] Even a song from the American Revolutionary War was adapted, as the tune "Yankee Doodle" was changed to "Dixie Doodle", and started with "Dixie whipped old Yankee Doodle early in the morning".[34] The Union's "Battle Cry of Freedom" was also altered, with the original lines of "The Union forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah! Down with the traitor, up with the star" being changed to "Our Dixie forever! She's never at a loss! Down with the eagle and up with the cross!"[35]
The Union also adapted Southern songs. In a Union variation of "Dixie", instead of the line "I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land", it was changed to "Away down South in the land of traitors, Rattlesnakes and alligators, Right away, come away, right away, come away".[36] "John Brown's Body" (originally titled "John Brown") was originally written for a soldier at Fort Warren in Boston in 1861. It was sung to the tune of "Glory, Hallelujah" and was later used by Julia Ward Howe for her famous poem, "Battle Hymn of the Republic".[37]
"The Battle of Shiloh" (1886), by C. L. Barnhouse, march for military band. The subject is the battle of the same name.
Names from the War (1961), by Alec Wilder, for narrator with chorus, woodwinds, and brass. Sets to music a long poem of the same name by Civil War historian Bruce Catton. 100 years later, what remains are the names.
The music derived from this war was of greater quantity and variety than from any other war involving America.[38] Songs came from a variety of sources. "Battle Hymn of the Republic" borrowed its tune from a song sung at Methodist revivals. "Dixie" was a minstrel song that Daniel Emmett adapted from two Ohio black singers named Snowden.[39] After the Civil War, American soldiers would continue to sing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" until World War II.[40]
A ballad from the war, "Aura Lee", would become the basis of the song "Love Me Tender" by Elvis Presley. Presley also sang "An American Trilogy", which was described as "smoothing" out "All My Trials", the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", and "Dixie" of its divisions, although "Dixie" still dominated the piece.[42]
"John Brown's Body", originally known as "John Brown's Song", is a United States marching song about the abolitionist John Brown. The song was popular in the Union during the American Civil War. The song arose out of the folk hymn tradition of the American camp meeting movement of the late 18th and early 19th century. According to an 1889 account, the original John Brown lyrics were a collective effort by a group of Union soldiers who were referring both to the famous John Brown and also, humorously, to a Sergeant John Brown of their own battalion. Various other authors have published additional verses or claimed credit for originating the John Brown lyrics and tune.
The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is an American patriotic song written by the abolitionist writer Julia Ward Howe during the American Civil War.
Henry Clay Work was an American songwriter and composer of the mid-19th century. He is best remembered for his musical contributions to the Union in the Civil War—songs documenting the afflictions of slavery, the hardships of army life and Northern triumphs in the conflict. His sentimental ballads, some of which promoted the growing temperance movement, have also left their mark on American music. Many of Work's compositions were performed at minstrel shows and Civil War veteran reunions. Although largely forgotten nowadays, he was one of the most successful musicians of his time, comparable to Stephen Foster and George F. Root in sales and sheer influence. In songwriting, he is renowned for his dexterity in African-American dialect, seriocomedy and melody.
The "Battle Cry of Freedom", also known as "Rally 'Round the Flag", is a song written in 1862 by American composer George Frederick Root (1820–1895) during the American Civil War. A patriotic song advocating the causes of Unionism and abolitionism, it became so popular that composer H. L. Schreiner and lyricist W. H. Barnes adapted it for the Confederacy.
"An American Trilogy" is a 1972 song medley arranged by country composer Mickey Newbury and popularized by Elvis Presley, who included it as a showstopper in his concert routines. The medley uses three 19th-century songs:
"God Save the South" is a poem-turned-song considered by some to have been the unofficial national anthem of the Confederate States of America. The words were written in 1861 by George Henry Miles, under the pen name Earnest Halphin. It was most commonly performed to a tune by Charles Wolfgang Amadeus Ellerbrock, although a second version was also published with a tune by C. T. De Cœniél.
"Marching Through Georgia" is an American Civil War-era marching song written and composed by Henry Clay Work in 1865. It is sung from the perspective of a Union soldier who had participated in Sherman's March to the Sea; he looks back on the momentous triumph after which Georgia became a "thoroughfare for freedom" and the Confederacy was left on its last legs.
George Frederick Root was a romantic American composer, who found particular fame during the American Civil War, with songs such as "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!" and "The Battle Cry of Freedom". He is regarded as the first American to compose a secular cantata.
"Aura Lea" is an American Civil War song about a maiden. It was written by W. W. Fosdick (lyrics) and George R. Poulton (music). The melody was used in Elvis Presley's 1956 hit song "Love Me Tender".
From the American Revolutionary War to the start of the American Civil War, American music underwent many changes. The folk vernacular traditions diversified and spread across the nation, while a number of prominent composers of European art music also arose.
"Dixie", also known as "Dixie's Land", "I Wish I Was in Dixie", and other titles, is a song about the Southern United States first made in 1859. It is one of the most distinctively Southern musical products of the 19th century. It was not a folk song at its creation, but it has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song likely rooted the word "Dixie" in the American vocabulary as a nickname for the Southern U.S.
"Nearer, My God, to Thee" is a 19th-century Christian hymn by Sarah Flower Adams, which retells the story of Jacob's dream. Genesis 28:11–12 can be translated as follows: "So he came to a certain place and stayed there all night because the sun had set. And he took one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep. Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it..."
"Kingdom Coming", or "The Year of Jubilo", is an American Civil War-era song written and composed by Henry Clay Work (1832–1884) in 1861. It was published by Root & Cady in 1862 and first advertised in April by the minstrel group Christy's Minstrels. Narrated by Black slaves on a Confederate plantation, "Kingdom Coming" recounts their impending freedom after their master disguises himself as a contraband and flees to avoid being captured by Union troops. It is a minstrel song, written in African American Vernacular English, spoken by slaves, and intended to be performed by blackface troupes.
We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder is an African American slave spiritual based in part on the Biblical story of Jacob's Ladder. It was developed some time before 1825, and became one of the first slave spirituals to be widely sung by white Christians. A number of artists have recorded notable versions of it, and it was used as one of the main themes in the critically praised documentary The Civil War.
Martial music or military music is a specific genre of music intended for use in military settings performed by professional soldiers called field musicians. Much of the military music has been composed to announce military events as with bugle calls and fanfares, or accompany marching formations with drum cadences, or mark special occasions as by military bands. However, music has been employed in battle for centuries, sometimes to intimidate the enemy and other times to encourage combatants, or to assist in organization and timing of actions in warfare. Depending on the culture, a variety of percussion and musical instruments have been used, such as drums, fifes, bugles, trumpets or other horns, bagpipes, triangles, cymbals, as well as larger military bands or full orchestras. Although some martial music has been composed in written form, other music has been developed or taught by ear, such as bugle calls or drum cadences, relying on group memory to coordinate the sounds.
Musician (Mus) is a rank equivalent to Private held by members of the Royal Corps of Army Music of the British Army and the Royal Marines Band Service. The rank was also previously used in the United States Army and Confederate States Army.
A war song is a musical composition that relates to war, or a society's attitudes towards war. They may be pro-war, anti-war, or simply a description of everyday life during war times.
This timeline of music in the United States covers the period from 1850 to 1879. It encompasses the California Gold Rush, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and touches on topics related to the intersections of music and law, commerce and industry, religion, race, ethnicity, politics, gender, education, historiography and academics. Subjects include folk, popular, theatrical and classical music, as well as Anglo-American, African American, Native American, Irish American, Arab American, Catholic, Swedish American, Shaker and Chinese American music.
Slavery played the central role during the American Civil War. The primary catalyst for secession was slavery, especially Southern political leaders' resistance to attempts by Northern antislavery political forces to block the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Slave life went through great changes, as the South saw Union Armies take control of broad areas of land. During and before the war, enslaved people played an active role in their own emancipation, and thousands of enslaved people escaped from bondage during the war.
"When This Cruel War Is Over", also known under the title "Weeping, Sad and Lonely", is a song written by Charles Carroll Sawyer with music by Henry Tucker. Published in 1863, it was a popular war song during the American Civil War, sung by both Union and Confederate troops.
McWhirter, Christian (2012). Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN978-1469613673.
Miller, David (2001). Uniforms, Weapons, and Equipment of the Civil War. London: Salamander Books. ISBN1-84065-257-8.
Ravitch, Diane (2000). The American Reader: Words that Moved a Nation. HarperCollins. ISBN0-06-273733-3.
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