Music From The Civil War

By Polly Bowman and Kim Johnson

The importance of music in Civil War time…

• Music was used to entertain troops• Bands played in parades• Music was used to express emotion• “Without music, there would have

been no army” – General Robert E. Lee

CATEGORIES OF MUSIC

• Songs from the North

• Songs from the South

• Emancipation songs

The drum corps of the 93rd New York Infantry in Bealeton, Va., August 1863.

Timothy H. O'Sullivan (1840-1882), photographer

Battle Hymn of the Republic

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

•Original popular lyrics were “John Brown’s Body”

•Julia Ward Howe wrote her own words to the tune. Soon after, it was published in the Atlantic Monthly as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Howe wrote in her autobiography that she wrote the verses to meet a challenge by a friend, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, who felt that the words should be more uplifting than the graphic description of John Brown’s body. Confederate soldiers sang their own verse to the tune.

When Johnny Comes Marching Home

• Credited to Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore• Gilmore ordered to reorganizestate military bands in 1863 which is said to be the year he wrote Johnny• Bears a remarkable similarity to the melody of the Irish song "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye,“• Popular with both the north and the south

Marching Through Georgia

•Georgia was written by Henry Clay Work shortly after General Sherman began his famous march to the sea about the 16th of November, 1864.

•After the incessant playing of the song, Sherman declared that he would never attend another national encampment until every band in the United States has signed an agreement not to play Marching Through Georgia in his presence. However, this was Sherman's last encampment, and when the tune was next played in his presence, six months after, "there came no response from the echoless shore to which his soul had wafted."

Popular Confederate Songs

•The Yellow Rose of Texas – first published in 1858 by Pond & Co. of New York for minstrel shows; became a favorite marching song of Confederate soldiers.

Oh my feet are torn and bloody, and my heart is full of woe,

I'm going back to Georgia, to find my Uncle Joe,

You may talk about your Beauregard, and sing of Bobbie Lee,

But the gallant Hood of Texas, he played hell in Tennessee.

•The lyrics above refer to famous Confederate generals Joseph Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard, Robert E. Lee, and John Bell Hood.

Popular Confederate Songs

•Goober Peas was a universal favorite song; Confederate Soldiers paltry rations late in the war were supplemented with goober peas, aka Georgia peanuts.

•A derivative of the African word nguba, "goober" is a southern U.S. name for peanut.  It's also referred to as a "goober pea”

•When the song was published its lyrics and music, were attributed to the fictitious team of "A. Pindar" and P. Nutt."

Popular Confederate Songs

•Dixie, composed in 1859 by Ohioan minstrel Dan Emmett became the unofficial national anthem of the Confederacy.

•It may derive from Mason and Dixon's Line, the name of the boundary separating North and South. Or it may come from dix, the French word for "ten," which was printed on the back of ten-dollar bills issued by the Citizens' Bank of New Orleans.

Emancipation Hymns

•Many runaway slaves (known as contrabands) sought refuge in Washington D.C.

•Aunt Mary Dines, friend of President Lincoln and White House employee, recalled that an emotional Lincoln would often visit the contraband camps and sing along with the groups

•“Go Down, Moses” is also said to have been sung by abolitionists to signal escape or rebellion.

Emancipation Hymns

•Lincoln was reported to have bowed his head and wiped away tears at the singing of Free At Last

Worksheets & Questions

•http://memory.loc.gov/learn/community/songThink.pdf

•http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/2095/2095_lightcivil_datasheet.pdf

SOURCES USED

•http://www.civilwarpoetry.org/music/index.html

•http://memory.loc.gov/learn/community/cc_music_kit.php

•http://memory.loc.gov/cocoon/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200000024/default.html

•http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/sfeature/song.html

•http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/b/h/bhymnotr.htm

•http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_howe_battle_hymn.htm

•The Civil War 4 CD set, Douglas Jimerson, Tenor, 1998 Amerimusic. Available from amazon.com

•http://www.mi5th.org/Songs/gooberpeas.htm

•http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_cuisine.htm

•http://www.answers.com/topic/dixie?cat=travel

•http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/lincoln/history.html