Back in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, my brother and I used to play Civil War in the fields and woods surrounding our house. Several other “troopers” would show up from time to time, and we fired away at each other with toy rifles, dirt clods, and stones.
When it rained, we’d break out our collection of toy soldiers, divide them into Rebels and Yankees, and turn the downstairs den into Gettysburg. Often, too, we’d sit and page through “The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War,” that wonderful two-volume boxed set that featured battlefield maps with tiny soldiers representing troop movements.
And we listened to music. In wonderful recognition of our passion, our parents bought us exquisite records created by composer Richard Bales, who apparently loved music and American history with equal passion. We played those two albums, “The Union” and “The Confederacy,” on the stereo so many times that 60 years later we can still sing parts of all the songs.
Bales carefully mirrored the music from both North and South in these albums. “General Lee’s Grand March” and “The American Army (Military Quickstep)” are instrumentals celebrating both the music and the military bands of that time. The South’s rousing “Bonnie Blue Flag” is met with the North’s raucous “Battle Cry of Freedom.” The plaintive “Just Before the Battle, Mother” was popular north of the Mason-Dixon Line, while “Somebody’s Darling” mourns the hospital death of a wounded Southern soldier. Other songs find soldiers thinking of home, like “All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight,” which tells of the death of a lone picket on duty.
And then, of course, there was “Dixie,” the song most closely associated with the Confederacy. Ironically, Abraham Lincoln loved this tune, used it on his campaign trail, and in an act of reconciliation at war’s end, asked a band to play the song just days before John Wilkes Booth assassinated him. Adding to this irony was the song’s origin. In 1859 Northerner Daniel Emmett composed “Dixie” for a New York minstrel show. Consequently, the slave-holding South adopted as its unofficial anthem a song first delivered by performers in blackface.
Yet these albums brought together only a fraction of the songs of the Civil War. America in the 19th century was a nation of singers and song, a country of choirs, band concerts, music institutes, parlor pianos, and homemade entertainment. Walt Whitman’s “I hear America Singing” was not only a metaphor, but a reality. Composers and publishing houses gave Americans on both sides of the conflict such a steady diet of songs and tunes that no other war in our country’s history produced so much music, some of which is still familiar to us today.
Furthermore, many contemporaries recognized music as vital to morale. “I don’t believe we can have an army without music,” Robert E. Lee once declared. In his book, “Lincoln and the Music of the Civil War,” historian Kenneth Bernard demonstrated how Americans on both sides carried their music with them when they marched off to war, writing: “In camp and hospital they sang – sentimental songs and ballads, comic songs and patriotic numbers....The songs were better than rations or medicine.” Concerts in camp were frequent, and sometimes enemy soldiers from the other side of the line would shout out their requests to the musicians.
The American Battlefield Trust further tells readers:
Soldiers marched to the rollicking ‘Eatin’ Goober Peas;’ they vented their war-weariness with ‘Hard Times;’ they sang about their life in ‘Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground;’ they were buried to the soulful strains of ‘Taps,’ written for the dead of both sides in the Seven Days’ Battles. When the guns stopped, the survivors returned to the haunting notes of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home.’
This year’s Fourth of July and its celebration of America’s 250th anniversary invites us not only to explore the era of the American founders and the Declaration of Independence, but all of America’s history. A friend told me that she will likely spend part of this special anniversary listening to patriotic music, and there’s no better place to start than with songs of the Civil War. Start with YouTube – you may be surprised at the abundance – and you’ll find the music familiar to Americans of that era, songs of war, love, grief, and pride.
You, too, can hear America singing.
Jeff Minick is a father of four and grandfather to many. A former history, literature, and Latin teacher, Jeff now writes prolifically for The Epoch Times, American Essence Magazine, and his Substack.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
