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War Music

www.kerstencards.com

Originally aired on December 01, 1995 - In part 66 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson describes how a strange combination of music and warfare characterized the 1860s.

#66 – The Favorite Song

Mid-nineteenth-century America was an age of unabashed sentimentalism. The country was young, fully half of its population being below the age of twenty-one. An adolescence, and an innocence, lay over the land even as the first attempt at a united states collapsed into civil war. Thus it was that a strange combination of warfare and music characterized the 1860s.

Music went hand-in-hand with the emotions of that war. The first song of the conflict appeared three days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Four years later, an estimated 2,000 melodies had been composed. Nothing in the history of music has ever made an impact comparable to that of the Civil War.

In the armies of North and South, music as a popular diversion was second only to letter-writing. Men left for war with a song on their lips; they sang while marching; they sang while waiting behind earthworks; music swelled from every nighttime bivouac; units were known to charge into battle singing some inspirational tune.

More than American servicemen of any other age, Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks were singing soldiers. This is not to imply that all of them accomplished at the art. A Confederate stationed in Louisiana told his wife of a Texan singing in camp. “His song,” the soldier wrote, “is a cross between the bray of a jackass, and the note of a turkey buzzard.” A Federal officer was of the same mind. Of life in his camp, he declared: “The pleasure of music predominated, but it was more noted for…noise in execution than artistic skill.”

The most popular songs in Civil War encampments were not the animated and martial airs that the folks back home (and generations of Americans thereafter) sang inspirationally. Instead, the melodies that most affected men of blue and gray were sad songs reflecting the soul-deep loneliness, homesickness, despair, and uncertainty so much a part of their waking hours.

One such song was When This Cruel War Is Over. Additional examples are Auld Lang Syne, Just before the Battle, Mother, Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground, and All Quiet along the Potomac Tonight. However, a single melody stood clearly above all others as the favorite of Civil War soldiers. Armies locked in mortal combat hours earlier would pause at the sound of its notes to share a common heartache.

This tune did not come from the war. Forty years earlier, an American named John Howard Payne had written the words as part of the libretto of an opera entitled The Maid of Milan. English composer Sir Henry Bishop added the music. The opera opened in London in 1823, but almost overnight Americans adopted it and made it their first musical “hit”.

The sentiments in the tune took on an even deeper poignancy when civil war exploded. Men in uniform sang:

’Mid pleasures and palaces though I may roam

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

That Home, Sweet Home was the all-time favorite of Civil War soldiers is incontestable. Early in December, 1862, two mighty armies gathered for battle at Fredericksburg, Virginia. Only the Rappahannock River separated the two hosts. One evening a Confederate band came to the front and played a few songs. Soon a Union band responded from across the way. The music ceased, and silence descended over what was soon to be a giant killing-ground.

Then a lone bugler played the notes of Home, Sweet Home. A New Hampshire soldier declared: “As the sweet sounds rose and fell on the evening air,…all listened intently, and I don’t believe there was a dry eye in all those assembled thousands” of soldiers.

Dr. James I. "Bud" Robertson, Jr., is a noted scholar on the American Civil War and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech.