#americancivilwar — Public Fediverse posts

"Mary Don't You Weep" (alternately titled "O Mary Don't You Weep", "Oh Mary, Don't You Weep, Don't You Mourn", or variations thereof) is a #Spiritual that originates from before the #AmericanCivilWar. As such, scholars sometimes refer to it as a "slave song", "a label that describes their origins among the enslaved", and it contains "coded messages of hope and resistance". It is considered "one of the most important Negro spirituals".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIyUAoalYic

GMT Games Purgatorio: Men of Iron IV: 14th century Italian knights vs the Confederate submarine corps; A commercially fearless decision and potential crossover of the decade. Trench Crusade didn't see this coming!
#GMTGames #wargames #medieval #Italy #AmericanCivilWar #Submarines
https://www.tabletopsentinel.com/news/historical/new-gmt-games-releases-for-early-may

GMT Games Purgatorio: Men of Iron IV: 14th century Italian knights vs the Confederate submarine corps; A commercially fearless decision and potential crossover of the decade. Trench Crusade didn't see this coming!
#GMTGames #wargames #medieval #Italy #AmericanCivilWar #Submarines
https://www.tabletopsentinel.com/news/historical/new-gmt-games-releases-for-early-may

GMT Games Purgatorio: Men of Iron IV: 14th century Italian knights vs the Confederate submarine corps; A commercially fearless decision and potential crossover of the decade. Trench Crusade didn't see this coming!
#GMTGames #wargames #medieval #Italy #AmericanCivilWar #Submarines
https://www.tabletopsentinel.com/news/historical/new-gmt-games-releases-for-early-may

GMT Games Purgatorio: Men of Iron IV: 14th century Italian knights vs the Confederate submarine corps; A commercially fearless decision and potential crossover of the decade. Trench Crusade didn't see this coming!
#GMTGames #wargames #medieval #Italy #AmericanCivilWar #Submarines
https://www.tabletopsentinel.com/news/historical/new-gmt-games-releases-for-early-may

Crossing is a two-act #opera composed by #MatthewAucoin. Based on #WaltWhitman's Memoranda During the War (1875), it offers a fictionalized account of Whitman's time as a nurse during the #AmericanCivilWar.

National Gallery of Art Acquires Important Collection of American Civil War Photographs https://petapixel.com/2026/03/29/national-gallery-of-art-acquires-important-collection-of-american-civil-war-photographs/ #nationalgalleryofart #alexandergardner #americancivilwar #abrahamlincoln #mathewbrady #civilwar #Analog #News

https://www.europesays.com/iran/27985/ March 20 in world history: From beginning of the Iraq war to Einstein’s theory that transformed physics #AmericanCivilWar #BlackDeath #GeorgeWBush #HarrietBeecherStowe #HenryV #InvasionOfIraq #Iraq #JohnLennon #RepublicanParty #TheoryOfRelativity

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ Duckport Canal ✧

The Duckport Canal was constructed by Union forces during the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. Ordered built in late March 1863 by Major General Ulysses S. Grant, the canal stretched from the Mississippi River near Duckport, Louisiana, to New Carthage, Louisiana, and utilized a series of bayous...

#AmericanCivilWar #MajorGeneralUlysses #Duckport #Louisiana #MississippiRiver #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duckport_Canal

Hype for the Future 119F: Gettysburg Area

https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/02/27/hype-for-the-future-119f-gettysburg-area/

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ Fort Southerland ✧

Fort Southerland is a redoubt built during the American Civil War to protect Camden, Arkansas. Confederate forces built it along with four other redoubts in early 1864 after a Union victory in the Little Rock campaign the previous year. Fort Southerland is about the size of a city block and is roughly oval. It could hold...

#AmericanCivilWar #FortSoutherland #Camden #Arkansas #Union #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Southerland

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ USS Romeo ✧

USS Romeo was a sternwheel steamer that saw service as a tinclad warship during the American Civil War. Completed in August 1862 as a civilian merchant vessel, she was instead purchased by the Union Navy in October. Commissioned in December, she cleared naval mines from the Yazoo River later that month before participating in operation...

#AmericanCivilWar #YazooRiver #UnionNavy #Romeo #YazooCity #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Romeo

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ USS Romeo ✧

USS Romeo was a sternwheel steamer that saw service as a tinclad warship during the American Civil War. Completed in August 1862 as a civilian merchant vessel, she was instead purchased by the Union Navy in October. Commissioned in December, she cleared naval mines from the Yazoo River later that month before participating in operation...

#AmericanCivilWar #YazooRiver #UnionNavy #Romeo #YazooCity #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Romeo

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ USS Romeo ✧

USS Romeo was a sternwheel steamer that saw service as a tinclad warship during the American Civil War. Completed in August 1862 as a civilian merchant vessel, she was instead purchased by the Union Navy in October. Commissioned in December, she cleared naval mines from the Yazoo River later that month before participating in operation...

#AmericanCivilWar #YazooRiver #UnionNavy #Romeo #YazooCity #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Romeo

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ USS Romeo ✧

USS Romeo was a sternwheel steamer that saw service as a tinclad warship during the American Civil War. Completed in August 1862 as a civilian merchant vessel, she was instead purchased by the Union Navy in October. Commissioned in December, she cleared naval mines from the Yazoo River later that month before participating in operation...

#AmericanCivilWar #YazooRiver #UnionNavy #Romeo #YazooCity #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Romeo

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ USS Romeo ✧

USS Romeo was a sternwheel steamer that saw service as a tinclad warship during the American Civil War. Completed in August 1862 as a civilian merchant vessel, she was instead purchased by the Union Navy in October. Commissioned in December, she cleared naval mines from the Yazoo River later that month before participating in operation...

#AmericanCivilWar #YazooRiver #UnionNavy #Romeo #YazooCity #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Romeo

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ CSS General Earl Van Dorn ✧

CSS General Earl Van Dorn was a cottonclad warship used by the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Purchased for Confederate service in New Orleans in early 1862 to serve with the River Defense Fleet, she was converted into a cottonclad warship by installing an iron-co...

#AmericanCivilWar #RiverDefenseFleet #PlumPointBend #CSS #Confederate #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_General_Earl_Van_Dorn

"Mary Don't You Weep" (alternately titled "O Mary Don't You Weep", "Oh Mary, Don't You Weep, Don't You Mourn", or variations thereof) is a #Spiritual that originates from before the #AmericanCivilWar. As such, scholars sometimes refer to it as a "slave song", "a label that describes their origins among the enslaved", and it contains "coded messages of hope and resistance". It is considered "one of the most important Negro spirituals".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiChwl_zHiU

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #theBand and released on their eponymous second album in 1969. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDbnwQlCek

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #theBand and released on their eponymous second album in 1969. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDbnwQlCek

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #theBand and released on their eponymous second album in 1969. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDbnwQlCek

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #theBand and released on their eponymous second album in 1969. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDbnwQlCek

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #theBand and released on their eponymous second album in 1969. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDbnwQlCek

The Hidden History of a 19th-Century Photograph and the Mystery of Its Unnamed Girl https://petapixel.com/2025/12/27/the-hidden-history-of-a-19th-century-photograph-and-the-mystery-of-its-unnamed-girl/ #alexandergardner #americancivilwar #historicalphotos #photodiscovery #Analog #News

Christmas 1862, by Thomas Nast.

Santa Claus brings US troops a toy depicting the death throes of traitor Jeff Davis hung by the neck.

You go, Wide Awake Union Santa!

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/429261

#SantaClaus #Thomas Nast #AmericanCivilWar #JeffersonDavis

‘Haunted and cursed’: Lake Lanier has a deadly reputation. A darker tale hides beneath the surface https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/23/lake-lanier-haunted-atlanta-georgia #Americancivilwar #Georgia #Atlanta #Culture #USnews #Usher #Music #Race

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔 𝗣𝗜𝗖𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗔𝗬

✧ Hugh McCulloch ✧

Hugh McCulloch (December 7, 1808 – May 24, 1895) was an American financier who played a central role in financing the American Civil War. He served two non-consecutive terms as United States Secretary of the Treasury under three presidents. He was originally opposed to the creation of a system of national banks, but his r...

#AmericanCivilWar #CivilWar #UnitedStates #Treasury #McCulloch #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_McCulloch

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ John Bullock Clark Sr. ✧

John Bullock Clark Sr. (April 17, 1802 – October 29, 1885) was an American militia officer and politician. A lawyer with a colorful reputation, he was also an officer in the Missouri militia. During the 1838 Mormon War, Clark was given the Extermination Order. A candidate in the ...

#MissouriStateGuard #AmericanCivilWar #UnitedStates #Missouri #ProvisionalConfederateCongress #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bullock_Clark

"Roll, Jordan, Roll" (#Roud 6697), also "Roll, Jordan", is a #spiritual created by enslaved African Americans, developed from a song written by #IsaacWatts in the 18th century which became well known among #slaves in the United States during the 19th century. Appropriated as a coded message for escape, by the end of the #AmericanCivilWar it had become known through much of the eastern United States. In the 19th century, it #helped inspire #blues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM15iIE_S_Y

"Roll, Jordan, Roll" (#Roud 6697), also "Roll, Jordan", is a #spiritual created by enslaved African Americans, developed from a song written by #IsaacWatts in the 18th century which became well known among #slaves in the United States during the 19th century. Appropriated as a coded message for escape, by the end of the #AmericanCivilWar it had become known through much of the eastern United States. In the 19th century, it #helped inspire #blues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM15iIE_S_Y

"Roll, Jordan, Roll" (#Roud 6697), also "Roll, Jordan", is a #spiritual created by enslaved African Americans, developed from a song written by #IsaacWatts in the 18th century which became well known among #slaves in the United States during the 19th century. Appropriated as a coded message for escape, by the end of the #AmericanCivilWar it had become known through much of the eastern United States. In the 19th century, it #helped inspire #blues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM15iIE_S_Y

"Roll, Jordan, Roll" (#Roud 6697), also "Roll, Jordan", is a #spiritual created by enslaved African Americans, developed from a song written by #IsaacWatts in the 18th century which became well known among #slaves in the United States during the 19th century. Appropriated as a coded message for escape, by the end of the #AmericanCivilWar it had become known through much of the eastern United States. In the 19th century, it #helped inspire #blues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM15iIE_S_Y

"Roll, Jordan, Roll" (#Roud 6697), also "Roll, Jordan", is a #spiritual created by enslaved African Americans, developed from a song written by #IsaacWatts in the 18th century which became well known among #slaves in the United States during the 19th century. Appropriated as a coded message for escape, by the end of the #AmericanCivilWar it had become known through much of the eastern United States. In the 19th century, it #helped inspire #blues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM15iIE_S_Y

"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" (also called "#Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore", "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore", or "Michael, Row That Gospel Boat") is a traditional #spiritual first noted during the #AmericanCivilWar at #StHelenaIsland, one of the #SeaIslands of #SouthCarolina. The best-known recording was released in 1960 by the U.S. folk band #TheHighwaymen; that version briefly reached number-one hit status as a single in the United States in September 1961.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrH2qV8NjHw

Part 2 of #AmericanPrestige pod's great interview w/ Prof #GregGrandin about his new book, #AmericaAmérica: A New History of the New World. This ep covers US–Latin American relations from the #AmericanCivilWar through the present, incl the #SpanishAmericanWar and the #MexicanRevolution.

https://americanprestige.supportingcast.fm/listen/american-prestige-1/e227-a-new-history-of-the-americas-pt-2-w-greg-grandin

#historyOfTheAmericas #LatinAmericanHistory #AmericanHistory #UShistory #USCivilWar #ModernHistory #colonialism #colonialViolence #revolutions #bookstodon #books @bookstodon

That Time Mathew Brady’s Assistant Almost Killed Ulysses S. Grant https://petapixel.com/2025/09/19/that-time-mathew-bradys-assistant-almost-killed-ulysses-s-grant/ #americancivilwar #historicalfriday #americanhistory #daguerreotype #ulyssessgrant #19thcentury #mathewbrady #Features #civilwar #Analog

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔 𝗣𝗜𝗖𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗔𝗬

✧ Battle of Antietam ✧

The Battle of Antietam took place during the American Civil War on September 17, 1862, between Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Union Major General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek. Part of the Maryland campaign, it was the first ...

#AmericanCivilWar #UnionArmy #Union #Maryland #DunkerChurch #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antietam

Victorian Photography Studio in Gettysburg Ravaged by Fire https://petapixel.com/2025/09/10/victorian-photography-studio-in-gettysburg-ravaged-by-fire/ #wetplatephotography #photographystudio #wetplatecollodion #americancivilwar #gettysburg #civilwar #wetplate #tintype #Analog #News #fire

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ Battle of Arkansas Post ✧

The Battle of Arkansas Post was fought from January 9 to 11, 1863, along the Arkansas River at Arkansas Post, Arkansas, as part of the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. Major General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union army started to move against Vicksburg in November 1862. He entrusted Willi...

#AmericanCivilWar #ArkansasPost #ArkansasRiver #Arkansas #Vicksburg #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arkansas_Post

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #TheBand in 1969 and released on their eponymous second album. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #TheBand in 1969 and released on their eponymous second album. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #TheBand in 1969 and released on their eponymous second album. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #TheBand in 1969 and released on their eponymous second album. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a song written by #RobbieRobertson. It was originally recorded by his Canadian-American #rootsRock group #TheBand in 1969 and released on their eponymous second album. #LevonHelm provided the lead vocals. The song is a first-person narrative relating the economic and social distress experienced by the protagonist, a poor white Southerner, during the last year of the #AmericanCivilWar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔 𝗣𝗜𝗖𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗔𝗬

✧ Dred Scott ✧

Dred Scott (c. 1799 – 1858) was an enslaved African American who, along with his wife, Harriet Robinson Scott, unsuccessfully sued for the freedom of themselves and their two daughters, Eliza and Lizzie, in the 1857 legal case Dred Scott v. Sandford. The Scotts claimed that they should be granted freedom because Dred...

#DredScott #UnitedStatesConstitution #UnitedStates #AmericanCivilWar #Scott #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ Battle of Poison Spring ✧

The Battle of Poison Spring was fought on April 18, 1864, as part of the Camden Expedition during the American Civil War. In support of the Red River campaign in Louisiana, a Union force commanded by Frederick Steele had moved from Little Rock, Arkansas, and occupied Camden. Short on supplies, Steele sent a detachmen...

#AmericanCivilWar #RedRiver #Camden #Union #Maxey #Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Poison_Spring

Music of the American Civil War Era

“The Songs of the War,” Homer Winslow (Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain; click image to enlarge).

“Music has done its share, and more than its share, in winning this war.” — Major-General Philip H. Sheridan

“The Civil War played an instrumental role in the development of an American national identity,” according to historians at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “Specifically for American folk music, the war inspired songwriting on both sides of the conflict, as amateurs and professionals wrote new, timely lyrics to old English, Scottish, and Irish ballads as well as original compositions.”

That new music, in turn, inspired one American artist, Winslow Homer, to capture the support he was witnessing and hearing for the United States government and its Union Army defenders during the mid-nineteenth century — support that was conveyed through the enthusiastic singing of pro-Union songs by soldiers, abolitionists and others who had dedicated themselves to the preservation of America’s Union and the eradication of the brutal practice of chattel slavery.

His sketch, “The Songs of the War,” which first appeared in print in the November 23, 1861 edition of Harper’s Weekly, featured seven of the most popular songs during the first year of the American Civil War: “The Bold Soldier Boy,” “Hail to the Chief,” “We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” “Rogue’s March,” “Glory Hallelujah,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and “Dixie.”

“The Bold Soldier Boy,” excerpt from the illustration, “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

“The Bold Soldier Boy” was an old folk song that had been arranged by multiple composers in different ways throughout the nineteenth century prior to Homer’s first hearing of it. The specific variant of the tune that sparked Homer’s imagination as he drew the scene in the upper left corner of “The Songs of the War” was most likely the version that had been arranged by S. Lover and William Dressler. Published by Wm. Hall & Son of New York in 1851, that variant was one of the selections that was included in book one of Dressler’s Scraps of Melody for Young Pianists.

According to Dressler’s obituary in the The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, William Dressler had created this arrangement shortly after his emigration to the United States. A native of Nottingham, England, he was a son of the “court flutist to the King of Saxony” and an 1847 graduate of the Cologne Conservatory of Music in Germany, and had become well-known across the United States as an “organist and professor of music.”

“Hail to the Chief,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861).

“Hail to the Chief,” has since become familiar to generations of Americans as the triumphal tune performed by the United States Marine Band (“The President’s Own“) to herald the arrival of presidents of the United States at State of the Union addresses presented to the United States Congress, as well as other functions of the United States government. According to military music historian Jari Villaneuva, this particular piece of music “was already very popular when the Marine Band played it from a barge for the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal on July 4, 1828, in the presence of President John Quincy Adams.”

During the American Civil War, “Hail to the Chief” was frequently performed by the bands of state and federal military regiments to announce the arrival of Union Army generals at special events, including the often well-attended public ceremonies when generals reviewed their troops. On September 17, 1861, for example, the Lancaster Intelligencer noted that Major-General George B. McClellan was greeted with a performance of “Hail to the Chief” as he arrived with a group of dignitaries at the camp of the Seventy-Ninth New York Volunteer Infantry on September 10.

“We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

With his scene, “We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” Homer was referencing a song that had been promoted in broadside advertisements in London, England as far back as 1832. The song had been made popular thanks to its frequent performance in music halls across Great Britain during the 1840s.

According to historians at the U.S. Library of Congress, the melody was included as “Free and Easy,” in a medley of songs for cornet that was arranged by David L. Downing circa 1861 for concert band performance, and had been included in one of the manuscript books of the Manchester Cornet Band.

The source for the tune appears to have been the chorus of “‘Gay and Happy.’ Composed and sung by Miss Fanny Forrest (with unbounded applause) (Baltimore: Henry McCaffrey [1860])…. This version, or one similar to it, was almost certainly what Winslow Homer had in mind:

I’m the lad that’s free and easy,
Wheresoe’er I chance to be;
And I’ll do my best to please ye,
If you will but list to me.

Chorus.–So let the world jog along as it will,
I’ll be free and easy still….

“We’ll Be Free and Easy Still” had become so popular by the mid-nineteenth century, in fact, that composer Stephen Foster referenced it in his 1866 song, “The Song of All Songs.

“Rogue’s March,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

Rogue’s March can be traced to an even earlier time — the mid-eighteenth century. It “was one of the most widespread and recognized melodies in martial repertory of the era,” according to Andrew Kuntz and Valerio Pelliccioni, creators of The Traditional Tune Archive. Also known as “Poor Old Robinson Crusoe,” this English march in G Major “was played in the British and American armies when military and civil offenders and other undesirable characters were drummed from camps and cantonments, sometimes with a halter about their necks, sometimes with the final disgrace of a farewell ritual kick from the regiment’s youngest drummer.” Also according to Kuntz and Pelliccioni:

[T]he actual ceremony consisted of as many drummers and fifers as possible (to make it the more impressive) [who] would parade the prisoner along the front of the regimental formation to this tune, and then to the entrance of the camp. The offender’s coat would be turned inside out as a sign of disgrace, and his hands were bound behind him…. The sentence would then be published in the local paper.

The fifers and drummers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were actually called upon to play the “Rogue’s March” during the punishment and dismissal of one of their regiment’s own while the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were preparing for the regiment’s departure for America’s Deep South. According to regimental historian Lewis Schmidt, the public shaming of Private James C. Robinson of the 47th Pennsylvania’s Company I began at 10 a.m. on Monday, January 27, 1862, at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where the regiment was briefly stationed.

The regiment was formed and instructed by Lt. Col. Alexander ‘that we were about drumming out a member who had behaved himself unlike a soldier.’ …. The prisoner, Pvt. James C. Robinson of Company I, was a 36 year old miner from Allentown who had been ‘disgracefully discharged’ by order of the War Department. Pvt. Robinson was marched out with martial music playing and a guard of nine men, two men on each side and five behind him at charge bayonets. The music then struck up with ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as the procession was marched up and down in front of the regiment, and Pvt. Robinson was marched out of the yard.

“Glory Hallelujah,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

“Glory Hallelujah” was almost certainly a reference to the chorus verse of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the song which quickly became an anthem for the Union Army after the lyrics were written by abolitionist and suffragist Julia Ward Howe during November 1861. Set to the melody (and partially derived from the lyrics) of “John Brown’s Body,” a song sung often by Union soldiers during the earliest months of the war, Howe’s “Battle Hymn” was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862 and remains one of the most popular patriotic songs in the United States.

The chorus of “Glory Hallelujah” was also then employed by Mrs. M. A. Kidder in an arrangement for piano by Augustus Cull of “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!“, which was published by Horace Waters of New York in 1862.

“The Girl I Left Behind Me,” excerpt from “The Songs of War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

Dating back to the 1700s, “The Girl I Left Behind Me” was derived from a popular Irish folk tune that reportedly served as the melody for multiple popular and military songs during the eighteenth and ninetenth centuries, according to Kuntz and Pelliccioni.

There are a few literary references to the song or melody. For example, “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” clearly a reference to the military use of the song, was the title of a chapter (XXX) in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848)…. The English novelist Thomas Hardy, himself an accordianist and fiddler, mentioned the tune in scene notes to The Dynasts….

James Fenimore Cooper mentions the tune in his novel of the sea, The Pilot (1824)….

“The Girl I Left Behind Me” has a long and illustrious history in America…. [I]t appears in Riley’s Flute Melodies, published in several volumes in New York beginning in 1814…. The melody appears in Bruce and Emmett’s Drummers’ and Fifers’ Guide, published in 1862 to help codify and train the hordes of new musicians needed for service in the Union Army early in the American Civil War. Therein it is remarked: “This air and (drum) beat is generally played at the departure of the soldiers from one city (or camp) to another….

“Dixie,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

The final song that Homer chose to include in his pro-Union music montage, “Dixie” (an anthem of the Confederacy), might seem to have been an odd choice on his part, were in not for the way in which he chose to illustrate it. In the foreground, a free Black man looks thoughtfully off into the distance as he sits atop a barrel labeled with the word, “Contraband,” while a still-enslaved Black man struggles to move a heavy bale of cotton in the background, his body buckling from the burden he shoulders. That image was Homer’s powerful way of reminding Harper’s Weekly readers that, although some progress had already been made in the fight against the brutal practice of chattel slavery in parts of the United States, that fight was not yet won in “Dixie,” where many who were still enslaved continued to suffer greatly.

Sources:

1. “Band Instruments,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
2. “Band Music,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
3. Baxter, John. “Free and Easy,” in “Folk Song and Music Hall.” Self-published, John Baxter, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
4. “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!”, in “New Music,” in “Local Items.” Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn Daily Times, 9 February 1862.
5. “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!”, in “Notated Music.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
6. “Civil War Music: Dixie.” Washington, D.C.: American Battlefield Trust, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
7. “Free and Easy,” in “A Concert for Brass Band Voice and Piano,” in “Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
8. Homer, Winslow. “The Songs of the Civil War.” New York, New York: Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861.
9. Kuntz, Andrew and Valerio Pelliccioni. “Rogue’s March.” Wappingers Falls, New York and Basiano, Italy: The Traditional Tune Archive, November 14, 2024.
10. Kuntz, Andrew and Valerio Pelliccioni. “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Wappingers Falls, New York and Basiano, Italy: The Traditional Tune Archive, December 22, 2024.
11. McCollum, Sean. “Battle Hymn of the Republic: The Story Behind the Song.” Washington, D.C.: The Kennedy Center, September 17, 2019.
12. “Pennsylvanians at Washington” (performance of “Hail to the Chief” to honor Major-General George B. McClellan). Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Lancaster Intelligencer, September 17, 1861.
13. “Songs of the Civil War,” in “Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
14. “The Bold Soldier Boy,” in “Notated Music.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
15. “The Bold Soldier Boy,” in Scraps of Melody for Young Pianists, in “New Music.” Cleveland Ohio: Morning Daily True Democrat, December 25, 1861.
16. “The Civil War Bands,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
17. Thomas, Anne Elise. “Music of the Civil War.” Washington, D.C.: The Kennedy Center, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
18. Thompson, Beth. in “The Song of All Songs,” in “Beth’s Notes: Supporting and Inspiring Music Educators.” Self-published: Beth Thompson, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
19. Villanueva, Jari. “Hail to the Chief.” Catonsville, Maryland: TapsBugler, January 17, 2025.
20. “William Dressler” (obituary). Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 3, 1914.

#America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #CivilWar #CivilWarBands #CivilWarMusic #FatherOfBandMusicInAmerica #History #Music #PennsylvaniaInTheCivilWar #TheUnionArmy #USMilitaryAndTheUnionArmy #WinslowHomer

Music of the American Civil War Era

“The Songs of the War,” Homer Winslow (Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain; click image to enlarge).

“Music has done its share, and more than its share, in winning this war.” — Major-General Philip H. Sheridan

“The Civil War played an instrumental role in the development of an American national identity,” according to historians at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “Specifically for American folk music, the war inspired songwriting on both sides of the conflict, as amateurs and professionals wrote new, timely lyrics to old English, Scottish, and Irish ballads as well as original compositions.”

That new music, in turn, inspired one American artist, Winslow Homer, to capture the support he was witnessing and hearing for the United States government and its Union Army defenders during the mid-nineteenth century — support that was conveyed through the enthusiastic singing of pro-Union songs by soldiers, abolitionists and others who had dedicated themselves to the preservation of America’s Union and the eradication of the brutal practice of chattel slavery.

His sketch, “The Songs of the War,” which first appeared in print in the November 23, 1861 edition of Harper’s Weekly, featured seven of the most popular songs during the first year of the American Civil War: “The Bold Soldier Boy,” “Hail to the Chief,” “We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” “Rogue’s March,” “Glory Hallelujah,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and “Dixie.”

“The Bold Soldier Boy,” excerpt from the illustration, “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

“The Bold Soldier Boy” was an old folk song that had been arranged by multiple composers in different ways throughout the nineteenth century prior to Homer’s first hearing of it. The specific variant of the tune that sparked Homer’s imagination as he drew the scene in the upper left corner of “The Songs of the War” was most likely the version that had been arranged by S. Lover and William Dressler. Published by Wm. Hall & Son of New York in 1851, that variant was one of the selections that was included in book one of Dressler’s Scraps of Melody for Young Pianists.

According to Dressler’s obituary in the The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, William Dressler had created this arrangement shortly after his emigration to the United States. A native of Nottingham, England, he was a son of the “court flutist to the King of Saxony” and an 1847 graduate of the Cologne Conservatory of Music in Germany, and had become well-known across the United States as an “organist and professor of music.”

“Hail to the Chief,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861).

“Hail to the Chief,” has since become familiar to generations of Americans as the triumphal tune performed by the United States Marine Band (“The President’s Own“) to herald the arrival of presidents of the United States at State of the Union addresses presented to the United States Congress, as well as other functions of the United States government. According to military music historian Jari Villaneuva, this particular piece of music “was already very popular when the Marine Band played it from a barge for the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal on July 4, 1828, in the presence of President John Quincy Adams.”

During the American Civil War, “Hail to the Chief” was frequently performed by the bands of state and federal military regiments to announce the arrival of Union Army generals at special events, including the often well-attended public ceremonies when generals reviewed their troops. On September 17, 1861, for example, the Lancaster Intelligencer noted that Major-General George B. McClellan was greeted with a performance of “Hail to the Chief” as he arrived with a group of dignitaries at the camp of the Seventy-Ninth New York Volunteer Infantry on September 10.

“We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

With his scene, “We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” Homer was referencing a song that had been promoted in broadside advertisements in London, England as far back as 1832. The song had been made popular thanks to its frequent performance in music halls across Great Britain during the 1840s.

According to historians at the U.S. Library of Congress, the melody was included as “Free and Easy,” in a medley of songs for cornet that was arranged by David L. Downing circa 1861 for concert band performance, and had been included in one of the manuscript books of the Manchester Cornet Band.

The source for the tune appears to have been the chorus of “‘Gay and Happy.’ Composed and sung by Miss Fanny Forrest (with unbounded applause) (Baltimore: Henry McCaffrey [1860])…. This version, or one similar to it, was almost certainly what Winslow Homer had in mind:

I’m the lad that’s free and easy,
Wheresoe’er I chance to be;
And I’ll do my best to please ye,
If you will but list to me.

Chorus.–So let the world jog along as it will,
I’ll be free and easy still….

“We’ll Be Free and Easy Still” had become so popular by the mid-nineteenth century, in fact, that composer Stephen Foster referenced it in his 1866 song, “The Song of All Songs.

“Rogue’s March,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

Rogue’s March can be traced to an even earlier time — the mid-eighteenth century. It “was one of the most widespread and recognized melodies in martial repertory of the era,” according to Andrew Kuntz and Valerio Pelliccioni, creators of The Traditional Tune Archive. Also known as “Poor Old Robinson Crusoe,” this English march in G Major “was played in the British and American armies when military and civil offenders and other undesirable characters were drummed from camps and cantonments, sometimes with a halter about their necks, sometimes with the final disgrace of a farewell ritual kick from the regiment’s youngest drummer.” Also according to Kuntz and Pelliccioni:

[T]he actual ceremony consisted of as many drummers and fifers as possible (to make it the more impressive) [who] would parade the prisoner along the front of the regimental formation to this tune, and then to the entrance of the camp. The offender’s coat would be turned inside out as a sign of disgrace, and his hands were bound behind him…. The sentence would then be published in the local paper.

The fifers and drummers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were actually called upon to play the “Rogue’s March” during the punishment and dismissal of one of their regiment’s own while the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were preparing for the regiment’s departure for America’s Deep South. According to regimental historian Lewis Schmidt, the public shaming of Private James C. Robinson of the 47th Pennsylvania’s Company I began at 10 a.m. on Monday, January 27, 1862, at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where the regiment was briefly stationed.

The regiment was formed and instructed by Lt. Col. Alexander ‘that we were about drumming out a member who had behaved himself unlike a soldier.’ …. The prisoner, Pvt. James C. Robinson of Company I, was a 36 year old miner from Allentown who had been ‘disgracefully discharged’ by order of the War Department. Pvt. Robinson was marched out with martial music playing and a guard of nine men, two men on each side and five behind him at charge bayonets. The music then struck up with ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as the procession was marched up and down in front of the regiment, and Pvt. Robinson was marched out of the yard.

“Glory Hallelujah,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

“Glory Hallelujah” was almost certainly a reference to the chorus verse of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the song which quickly became an anthem for the Union Army after the lyrics were written by abolitionist and suffragist Julia Ward Howe during November 1861. Set to the melody (and partially derived from the lyrics) of “John Brown’s Body,” a song sung often by Union soldiers during the earliest months of the war, Howe’s “Battle Hymn” was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862 and remains one of the most popular patriotic songs in the United States.

The chorus of “Glory Hallelujah” was also then employed by Mrs. M. A. Kidder in an arrangement for piano by Augustus Cull of “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!“, which was published by Horace Waters of New York in 1862.

“The Girl I Left Behind Me,” excerpt from “The Songs of War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

Dating back to the 1700s, “The Girl I Left Behind Me” was derived from a popular Irish folk tune that reportedly served as the melody for multiple popular and military songs during the eighteenth and ninetenth centuries, according to Kuntz and Pelliccioni.

There are a few literary references to the song or melody. For example, “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” clearly a reference to the military use of the song, was the title of a chapter (XXX) in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848)…. The English novelist Thomas Hardy, himself an accordianist and fiddler, mentioned the tune in scene notes to The Dynasts….

James Fenimore Cooper mentions the tune in his novel of the sea, The Pilot (1824)….

“The Girl I Left Behind Me” has a long and illustrious history in America…. [I]t appears in Riley’s Flute Melodies, published in several volumes in New York beginning in 1814…. The melody appears in Bruce and Emmett’s Drummers’ and Fifers’ Guide, published in 1862 to help codify and train the hordes of new musicians needed for service in the Union Army early in the American Civil War. Therein it is remarked: “This air and (drum) beat is generally played at the departure of the soldiers from one city (or camp) to another….

“Dixie,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

The final song that Homer chose to include in his pro-Union music montage, “Dixie” (an anthem of the Confederacy), might seem to have been an odd choice on his part, were in not for the way in which he chose to illustrate it. In the foreground, a free Black man looks thoughtfully off into the distance as he sits atop a barrel labeled with the word, “Contraband,” while a still-enslaved Black man struggles to move a heavy bale of cotton in the background, his body buckling from the burden he shoulders. That image was Homer’s powerful way of reminding Harper’s Weekly readers that, although some progress had already been made in the fight against the brutal practice of chattel slavery in parts of the United States, that fight was not yet won in “Dixie,” where many who were still enslaved continued to suffer greatly.

Sources:

1. “Band Instruments,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
2. “Band Music,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
3. Baxter, John. “Free and Easy,” in “Folk Song and Music Hall.” Self-published, John Baxter, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
4. “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!”, in “New Music,” in “Local Items.” Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn Daily Times, 9 February 1862.
5. “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!”, in “Notated Music.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
6. “Civil War Music: Dixie.” Washington, D.C.: American Battlefield Trust, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
7. “Free and Easy,” in “A Concert for Brass Band Voice and Piano,” in “Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
8. Homer, Winslow. “The Songs of the Civil War.” New York, New York: Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861.
9. Kuntz, Andrew and Valerio Pelliccioni. “Rogue’s March.” Wappingers Falls, New York and Basiano, Italy: The Traditional Tune Archive, November 14, 2024.
10. Kuntz, Andrew and Valerio Pelliccioni. “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Wappingers Falls, New York and Basiano, Italy: The Traditional Tune Archive, December 22, 2024.
11. McCollum, Sean. “Battle Hymn of the Republic: The Story Behind the Song.” Washington, D.C.: The Kennedy Center, September 17, 2019.
12. “Pennsylvanians at Washington” (performance of “Hail to the Chief” to honor Major-General George B. McClellan). Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Lancaster Intelligencer, September 17, 1861.
13. “Songs of the Civil War,” in “Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
14. “The Bold Soldier Boy,” in “Notated Music.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
15. “The Bold Soldier Boy,” in Scraps of Melody for Young Pianists, in “New Music.” Cleveland Ohio: Morning Daily True Democrat, December 25, 1861.
16. “The Civil War Bands,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
17. Thomas, Anne Elise. “Music of the Civil War.” Washington, D.C.: The Kennedy Center, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
18. Thompson, Beth. in “The Song of All Songs,” in “Beth’s Notes: Supporting and Inspiring Music Educators.” Self-published: Beth Thompson, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
19. Villanueva, Jari. “Hail to the Chief.” Catonsville, Maryland: TapsBugler, January 17, 2025.
20. “William Dressler” (obituary). Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 3, 1914.

#America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #CivilWar #CivilWarBands #CivilWarMusic #FatherOfBandMusicInAmerica #History #Music #PennsylvaniaInTheCivilWar #TheUnionArmy #USMilitaryAndTheUnionArmy #WinslowHomer

Music of the American Civil War Era

“The Songs of the War,” Homer Winslow (Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain; click image to enlarge).

“Music has done its share, and more than its share, in winning this war.” — Major-General Philip H. Sheridan

“The Civil War played an instrumental role in the development of an American national identity,” according to historians at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “Specifically for American folk music, the war inspired songwriting on both sides of the conflict, as amateurs and professionals wrote new, timely lyrics to old English, Scottish, and Irish ballads as well as original compositions.”

That new music, in turn, inspired one American artist, Winslow Homer, to capture the support he was witnessing and hearing for the United States government and its Union Army defenders during the mid-nineteenth century — support that was conveyed through the enthusiastic singing of pro-Union songs by soldiers, abolitionists and others who had dedicated themselves to the preservation of America’s Union and the eradication of the brutal practice of chattel slavery.

His sketch, “The Songs of the War,” which first appeared in print in the November 23, 1861 edition of Harper’s Weekly, featured seven of the most popular songs during the first year of the American Civil War: “The Bold Soldier Boy,” “Hail to the Chief,” “We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” “Rogue’s March,” “Glory Hallelujah,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and “Dixie.”

“The Bold Soldier Boy,” excerpt from the illustration, “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

“The Bold Soldier Boy” was an old folk song that had been arranged by multiple composers in different ways throughout the nineteenth century prior to Homer’s first hearing of it. The specific variant of the tune that sparked Homer’s imagination as he drew the scene in the upper left corner of “The Songs of the War” was most likely the version that had been arranged by S. Lover and William Dressler. Published by Wm. Hall & Son of New York in 1851, that variant was one of the selections that was included in book one of Dressler’s Scraps of Melody for Young Pianists.

According to Dressler’s obituary in the The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, William Dressler had created this arrangement shortly after his emigration to the United States. A native of Nottingham, England, he was a son of the “court flutist to the King of Saxony” and an 1847 graduate of the Cologne Conservatory of Music in Germany, and had become well-known across the United States as an “organist and professor of music.”

“Hail to the Chief,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861).

“Hail to the Chief,” has since become familiar to generations of Americans as the triumphal tune performed by the United States Marine Band (“The President’s Own“) to herald the arrival of presidents of the United States at State of the Union addresses presented to the United States Congress, as well as other functions of the United States government. According to military music historian Jari Villaneuva, this particular piece of music “was already very popular when the Marine Band played it from a barge for the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal on July 4, 1828, in the presence of President John Quincy Adams.”

During the American Civil War, “Hail to the Chief” was frequently performed by the bands of state and federal military regiments to announce the arrival of Union Army generals at special events, including the often well-attended public ceremonies when generals reviewed their troops. On September 17, 1861, for example, the Lancaster Intelligencer noted that Major-General George B. McClellan was greeted with a performance of “Hail to the Chief” as he arrived with a group of dignitaries at the camp of the Seventy-Ninth New York Volunteer Infantry on September 10.

“We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

With his scene, “We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” Homer was referencing a song that had been promoted in broadside advertisements in London, England as far back as 1832. The song had been made popular thanks to its frequent performance in music halls across Great Britain during the 1840s.

According to historians at the U.S. Library of Congress, the melody was included as “Free and Easy,” in a medley of songs for cornet that was arranged by David L. Downing circa 1861 for concert band performance, and had been included in one of the manuscript books of the Manchester Cornet Band.

The source for the tune appears to have been the chorus of “‘Gay and Happy.’ Composed and sung by Miss Fanny Forrest (with unbounded applause) (Baltimore: Henry McCaffrey [1860])…. This version, or one similar to it, was almost certainly what Winslow Homer had in mind:

I’m the lad that’s free and easy,
Wheresoe’er I chance to be;
And I’ll do my best to please ye,
If you will but list to me.

Chorus.–So let the world jog along as it will,
I’ll be free and easy still….

“We’ll Be Free and Easy Still” had become so popular by the mid-nineteenth century, in fact, that composer Stephen Foster referenced it in his 1866 song, “The Song of All Songs.

“Rogue’s March,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

Rogue’s March can be traced to an even earlier time — the mid-eighteenth century. It “was one of the most widespread and recognized melodies in martial repertory of the era,” according to Andrew Kuntz and Valerio Pelliccioni, creators of The Traditional Tune Archive. Also known as “Poor Old Robinson Crusoe,” this English march in G Major “was played in the British and American armies when military and civil offenders and other undesirable characters were drummed from camps and cantonments, sometimes with a halter about their necks, sometimes with the final disgrace of a farewell ritual kick from the regiment’s youngest drummer.” Also according to Kuntz and Pelliccioni:

[T]he actual ceremony consisted of as many drummers and fifers as possible (to make it the more impressive) [who] would parade the prisoner along the front of the regimental formation to this tune, and then to the entrance of the camp. The offender’s coat would be turned inside out as a sign of disgrace, and his hands were bound behind him…. The sentence would then be published in the local paper.

The fifers and drummers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were actually called upon to play the “Rogue’s March” during the punishment and dismissal of one of their regiment’s own while the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were preparing for the regiment’s departure for America’s Deep South. According to regimental historian Lewis Schmidt, the public shaming of Private James C. Robinson of the 47th Pennsylvania’s Company I began at 10 a.m. on Monday, January 27, 1862, at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where the regiment was briefly stationed.

The regiment was formed and instructed by Lt. Col. Alexander ‘that we were about drumming out a member who had behaved himself unlike a soldier.’ …. The prisoner, Pvt. James C. Robinson of Company I, was a 36 year old miner from Allentown who had been ‘disgracefully discharged’ by order of the War Department. Pvt. Robinson was marched out with martial music playing and a guard of nine men, two men on each side and five behind him at charge bayonets. The music then struck up with ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as the procession was marched up and down in front of the regiment, and Pvt. Robinson was marched out of the yard.

“Glory Hallelujah,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

“Glory Hallelujah” was almost certainly a reference to the chorus verse of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the song which quickly became an anthem for the Union Army after the lyrics were written by abolitionist and suffragist Julia Ward Howe during November 1861. Set to the melody (and partially derived from the lyrics) of “John Brown’s Body,” a song sung often by Union soldiers during the earliest months of the war, Howe’s “Battle Hymn” was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862 and remains one of the most popular patriotic songs in the United States.

The chorus of “Glory Hallelujah” was also then employed by Mrs. M. A. Kidder in an arrangement for piano by Augustus Cull of “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!“, which was published by Horace Waters of New York in 1862.

“The Girl I Left Behind Me,” excerpt from “The Songs of War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

Dating back to the 1700s, “The Girl I Left Behind Me” was derived from a popular Irish folk tune that reportedly served as the melody for multiple popular and military songs during the eighteenth and ninetenth centuries, according to Kuntz and Pelliccioni.

There are a few literary references to the song or melody. For example, “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” clearly a reference to the military use of the song, was the title of a chapter (XXX) in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848)…. The English novelist Thomas Hardy, himself an accordianist and fiddler, mentioned the tune in scene notes to The Dynasts….

James Fenimore Cooper mentions the tune in his novel of the sea, The Pilot (1824)….

“The Girl I Left Behind Me” has a long and illustrious history in America…. [I]t appears in Riley’s Flute Melodies, published in several volumes in New York beginning in 1814…. The melody appears in Bruce and Emmett’s Drummers’ and Fifers’ Guide, published in 1862 to help codify and train the hordes of new musicians needed for service in the Union Army early in the American Civil War. Therein it is remarked: “This air and (drum) beat is generally played at the departure of the soldiers from one city (or camp) to another….

“Dixie,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

The final song that Homer chose to include in his pro-Union music montage, “Dixie” (an anthem of the Confederacy), might seem to have been an odd choice on his part, were in not for the way in which he chose to illustrate it. In the foreground, a free Black man looks thoughtfully off into the distance as he sits atop a barrel labeled with the word, “Contraband,” while a still-enslaved Black man struggles to move a heavy bale of cotton in the background, his body buckling from the burden he shoulders. That image was Homer’s powerful way of reminding Harper’s Weekly readers that, although some progress had already been made in the fight against the brutal practice of chattel slavery in parts of the United States, that fight was not yet won in “Dixie,” where many who were still enslaved continued to suffer greatly.

Sources:

1. “Band Instruments,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
2. “Band Music,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
3. Baxter, John. “Free and Easy,” in “Folk Song and Music Hall.” Self-published, John Baxter, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
4. “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!”, in “New Music,” in “Local Items.” Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn Daily Times, 9 February 1862.
5. “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!”, in “Notated Music.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
6. “Civil War Music: Dixie.” Washington, D.C.: American Battlefield Trust, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
7. “Free and Easy,” in “A Concert for Brass Band Voice and Piano,” in “Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
8. Homer, Winslow. “The Songs of the Civil War.” New York, New York: Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861.
9. Kuntz, Andrew and Valerio Pelliccioni. “Rogue’s March.” Wappingers Falls, New York and Basiano, Italy: The Traditional Tune Archive, November 14, 2024.
10. Kuntz, Andrew and Valerio Pelliccioni. “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Wappingers Falls, New York and Basiano, Italy: The Traditional Tune Archive, December 22, 2024.
11. McCollum, Sean. “Battle Hymn of the Republic: The Story Behind the Song.” Washington, D.C.: The Kennedy Center, September 17, 2019.
12. “Pennsylvanians at Washington” (performance of “Hail to the Chief” to honor Major-General George B. McClellan). Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Lancaster Intelligencer, September 17, 1861.
13. “Songs of the Civil War,” in “Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
14. “The Bold Soldier Boy,” in “Notated Music.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
15. “The Bold Soldier Boy,” in Scraps of Melody for Young Pianists, in “New Music.” Cleveland Ohio: Morning Daily True Democrat, December 25, 1861.
16. “The Civil War Bands,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
17. Thomas, Anne Elise. “Music of the Civil War.” Washington, D.C.: The Kennedy Center, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
18. Thompson, Beth. in “The Song of All Songs,” in “Beth’s Notes: Supporting and Inspiring Music Educators.” Self-published: Beth Thompson, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
19. Villanueva, Jari. “Hail to the Chief.” Catonsville, Maryland: TapsBugler, January 17, 2025.
20. “William Dressler” (obituary). Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 3, 1914.

#America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #CivilWar #CivilWarBands #CivilWarMusic #FatherOfBandMusicInAmerica #History #Music #PennsylvaniaInTheCivilWar #TheUnionArmy #USMilitaryAndTheUnionArmy #WinslowHomer

Music of the American Civil War Era

“The Songs of the War,” Homer Winslow (Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain; click image to enlarge).

“Music has done its share, and more than its share, in winning this war.” — Major-General Philip H. Sheridan

“The Civil War played an instrumental role in the development of an American national identity,” according to historians at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “Specifically for American folk music, the war inspired songwriting on both sides of the conflict, as amateurs and professionals wrote new, timely lyrics to old English, Scottish, and Irish ballads as well as original compositions.”

That new music, in turn, inspired one American artist, Winslow Homer, to capture the support he was witnessing and hearing for the United States government and its Union Army defenders during the mid-nineteenth century — support that was conveyed through the enthusiastic singing of pro-Union songs by soldiers, abolitionists and others who had dedicated themselves to the preservation of America’s Union and the eradication of the brutal practice of chattel slavery.

His sketch, “The Songs of the War,” which first appeared in print in the November 23, 1861 edition of Harper’s Weekly, featured seven of the most popular songs during the first year of the American Civil War: “The Bold Soldier Boy,” “Hail to the Chief,” “We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” “Rogue’s March,” “Glory Hallelujah,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and “Dixie.”

“The Bold Soldier Boy,” excerpt from the illustration, “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

“The Bold Soldier Boy” was an old folk song that had been arranged by multiple composers in different ways throughout the nineteenth century prior to Homer’s first hearing of it. The specific variant of the tune that sparked Homer’s imagination as he drew the scene in the upper left corner of “The Songs of the War” was most likely the version that had been arranged by S. Lover and William Dressler. Published by Wm. Hall & Son of New York in 1851, that variant was one of the selections that was included in book one of Dressler’s Scraps of Melody for Young Pianists.

According to Dressler’s obituary in the The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, William Dressler had created this arrangement shortly after his emigration to the United States. A native of Nottingham, England, he was a son of the “court flutist to the King of Saxony” and an 1847 graduate of the Cologne Conservatory of Music in Germany, and had become well-known across the United States as an “organist and professor of music.”

“Hail to the Chief,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861).

“Hail to the Chief,” has since become familiar to generations of Americans as the triumphal tune performed by the United States Marine Band (“The President’s Own“) to herald the arrival of presidents of the United States at State of the Union addresses presented to the United States Congress, as well as other functions of the United States government. According to military music historian Jari Villaneuva, this particular piece of music “was already very popular when the Marine Band played it from a barge for the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal on July 4, 1828, in the presence of President John Quincy Adams.”

During the American Civil War, “Hail to the Chief” was frequently performed by the bands of state and federal military regiments to announce the arrival of Union Army generals at special events, including the often well-attended public ceremonies when generals reviewed their troops. On September 17, 1861, for example, the Lancaster Intelligencer noted that Major-General George B. McClellan was greeted with a performance of “Hail to the Chief” as he arrived with a group of dignitaries at the camp of the Seventy-Ninth New York Volunteer Infantry on September 10.

“We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

With his scene, “We’ll Be Free and Easy Still,” Homer was referencing a song that had been promoted in broadside advertisements in London, England as far back as 1832. The song had been made popular thanks to its frequent performance in music halls across Great Britain during the 1840s.

According to historians at the U.S. Library of Congress, the melody was included as “Free and Easy,” in a medley of songs for cornet that was arranged by David L. Downing circa 1861 for concert band performance, and had been included in one of the manuscript books of the Manchester Cornet Band.

The source for the tune appears to have been the chorus of “‘Gay and Happy.’ Composed and sung by Miss Fanny Forrest (with unbounded applause) (Baltimore: Henry McCaffrey [1860])…. This version, or one similar to it, was almost certainly what Winslow Homer had in mind:

I’m the lad that’s free and easy,
Wheresoe’er I chance to be;
And I’ll do my best to please ye,
If you will but list to me.

Chorus.–So let the world jog along as it will,
I’ll be free and easy still….

“We’ll Be Free and Easy Still” had become so popular by the mid-nineteenth century, in fact, that composer Stephen Foster referenced it in his 1866 song, “The Song of All Songs.

“Rogue’s March,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

Rogue’s March can be traced to an even earlier time — the mid-eighteenth century. It “was one of the most widespread and recognized melodies in martial repertory of the era,” according to Andrew Kuntz and Valerio Pelliccioni, creators of The Traditional Tune Archive. Also known as “Poor Old Robinson Crusoe,” this English march in G Major “was played in the British and American armies when military and civil offenders and other undesirable characters were drummed from camps and cantonments, sometimes with a halter about their necks, sometimes with the final disgrace of a farewell ritual kick from the regiment’s youngest drummer.” Also according to Kuntz and Pelliccioni:

[T]he actual ceremony consisted of as many drummers and fifers as possible (to make it the more impressive) [who] would parade the prisoner along the front of the regimental formation to this tune, and then to the entrance of the camp. The offender’s coat would be turned inside out as a sign of disgrace, and his hands were bound behind him…. The sentence would then be published in the local paper.

The fifers and drummers of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were actually called upon to play the “Rogue’s March” during the punishment and dismissal of one of their regiment’s own while the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were preparing for the regiment’s departure for America’s Deep South. According to regimental historian Lewis Schmidt, the public shaming of Private James C. Robinson of the 47th Pennsylvania’s Company I began at 10 a.m. on Monday, January 27, 1862, at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where the regiment was briefly stationed.

The regiment was formed and instructed by Lt. Col. Alexander ‘that we were about drumming out a member who had behaved himself unlike a soldier.’ …. The prisoner, Pvt. James C. Robinson of Company I, was a 36 year old miner from Allentown who had been ‘disgracefully discharged’ by order of the War Department. Pvt. Robinson was marched out with martial music playing and a guard of nine men, two men on each side and five behind him at charge bayonets. The music then struck up with ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as the procession was marched up and down in front of the regiment, and Pvt. Robinson was marched out of the yard.

“Glory Hallelujah,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

“Glory Hallelujah” was almost certainly a reference to the chorus verse of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the song which quickly became an anthem for the Union Army after the lyrics were written by abolitionist and suffragist Julia Ward Howe during November 1861. Set to the melody (and partially derived from the lyrics) of “John Brown’s Body,” a song sung often by Union soldiers during the earliest months of the war, Howe’s “Battle Hymn” was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862 and remains one of the most popular patriotic songs in the United States.

The chorus of “Glory Hallelujah” was also then employed by Mrs. M. A. Kidder in an arrangement for piano by Augustus Cull of “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!“, which was published by Horace Waters of New York in 1862.

“The Girl I Left Behind Me,” excerpt from “The Songs of War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

Dating back to the 1700s, “The Girl I Left Behind Me” was derived from a popular Irish folk tune that reportedly served as the melody for multiple popular and military songs during the eighteenth and ninetenth centuries, according to Kuntz and Pelliccioni.

There are a few literary references to the song or melody. For example, “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” clearly a reference to the military use of the song, was the title of a chapter (XXX) in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848)…. The English novelist Thomas Hardy, himself an accordianist and fiddler, mentioned the tune in scene notes to The Dynasts….

James Fenimore Cooper mentions the tune in his novel of the sea, The Pilot (1824)….

“The Girl I Left Behind Me” has a long and illustrious history in America…. [I]t appears in Riley’s Flute Melodies, published in several volumes in New York beginning in 1814…. The melody appears in Bruce and Emmett’s Drummers’ and Fifers’ Guide, published in 1862 to help codify and train the hordes of new musicians needed for service in the Union Army early in the American Civil War. Therein it is remarked: “This air and (drum) beat is generally played at the departure of the soldiers from one city (or camp) to another….

“Dixie,” excerpt from “The Songs of the War” (Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861, public domain).

The final song that Homer chose to include in his pro-Union music montage, “Dixie” (an anthem of the Confederacy), might seem to have been an odd choice on his part, were in not for the way in which he chose to illustrate it. In the foreground, a free Black man looks thoughtfully off into the distance as he sits atop a barrel labeled with the word, “Contraband,” while a still-enslaved Black man struggles to move a heavy bale of cotton in the background, his body buckling from the burden he shoulders. That image was Homer’s powerful way of reminding Harper’s Weekly readers that, although some progress had already been made in the fight against the brutal practice of chattel slavery in parts of the United States, that fight was not yet won in “Dixie,” where many who were still enslaved continued to suffer greatly.

Sources:

1. “Band Instruments,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
2. “Band Music,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
3. Baxter, John. “Free and Easy,” in “Folk Song and Music Hall.” Self-published, John Baxter, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
4. “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!”, in “New Music,” in “Local Items.” Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn Daily Times, 9 February 1862.
5. “Brave McClellan Is Our Leader Now, or Glory Hallelujah!”, in “Notated Music.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
6. “Civil War Music: Dixie.” Washington, D.C.: American Battlefield Trust, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
7. “Free and Easy,” in “A Concert for Brass Band Voice and Piano,” in “Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
8. Homer, Winslow. “The Songs of the Civil War.” New York, New York: Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861.
9. Kuntz, Andrew and Valerio Pelliccioni. “Rogue’s March.” Wappingers Falls, New York and Basiano, Italy: The Traditional Tune Archive, November 14, 2024.
10. Kuntz, Andrew and Valerio Pelliccioni. “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Wappingers Falls, New York and Basiano, Italy: The Traditional Tune Archive, December 22, 2024.
11. McCollum, Sean. “Battle Hymn of the Republic: The Story Behind the Song.” Washington, D.C.: The Kennedy Center, September 17, 2019.
12. “Pennsylvanians at Washington” (performance of “Hail to the Chief” to honor Major-General George B. McClellan). Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Lancaster Intelligencer, September 17, 1861.
13. “Songs of the Civil War,” in “Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
14. “The Bold Soldier Boy,” in “Notated Music.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
15. “The Bold Soldier Boy,” in Scraps of Melody for Young Pianists, in “New Music.” Cleveland Ohio: Morning Daily True Democrat, December 25, 1861.
16. “The Civil War Bands,” in “Collection: Band Music from the Civil War Era.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Library of Congress, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
17. Thomas, Anne Elise. “Music of the Civil War.” Washington, D.C.: The Kennedy Center, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
18. Thompson, Beth. in “The Song of All Songs,” in “Beth’s Notes: Supporting and Inspiring Music Educators.” Self-published: Beth Thompson, retrieved online January 17, 2025.
19. Villanueva, Jari. “Hail to the Chief.” Catonsville, Maryland: TapsBugler, January 17, 2025.
20. “William Dressler” (obituary). Brooklyn, New York: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 3, 1914.

#America #AmericanCivilWar #AmericanHistory #CivilWar #CivilWarBands #CivilWarMusic #FatherOfBandMusicInAmerica #History #Music #PennsylvaniaInTheCivilWar #TheUnionArmy #USMilitaryAndTheUnionArmy #WinslowHomer