The exalted role of woman provided a powerful national emblem or symbol in both the North and the South (as did the denigration of the enemy’s women). A column for the New York Times on “The Women and the War” opened:Whatever folly our public declaimers may have uttered year after year on “Women’s Rights,” practically, the women of America have “rights and privileges” in all that man does, and feels, and possesses, through the best medium—her sympathy.... The women far more than the men in the North, have always been, in feeling and instinct, opposed to the Southern “sacred institution.”
The same editorial accused the women of the South of “amazing ferocity and bitterness,” and traced it to the same source:We believe it but a corresponding part to what we have been describing at the North. The American woman shares all things with the man. If he is a rebel and a barbarian, she will be so, too. If he hates the flag, she will hate it also. If he drinks from Yankee skulls and plays tattoo with Northern tibia, she will display barbarism in her own way—by weak insults, by bitter taunts, by spitting in the faces of those who, as gentlemen, cannot protect themselves, by vulgar gestures and coarse abuse of the suffering. And inasmuch as in sympathy with the man’s ferocity she has violated her own nature, so will she be ten times as much of a devil as he.28
CHAPTER 12
“THE POPULAR HEART”
Even as soldiers, statesmen, mothers, and children geared for a rapidly escalating war, artists were more than willing to lend their hands to the cause. The arts proved as captive to the war as print and oratory, and they were boxed in the same rhetorical traps. In both the North and the South, music had long thrived. So a citizens’ war was inevitably a patriotic musical war on the battlefront no less than the home front. Lydia Maria Child, the staunch abolitionist and writer, recognized that “nothing on earth has such effect on the popular heart as Songs, which the soldiers would take up with enthusiasm, and which it would thereby become the fashion to whistle and sing.... Old John Brown, Hallelujah is performing a wonderful mission now.”1
In his history of music in the North, Kenneth A. Bernard estimates that during the first year alone, at least two thousand compositions were produced, and “by the end of the war more music had been created, played, and sung than during all our other wars combined.”2 Despite Southern shortages of paper and printers, this was as true in the South as in the North. Patriotic songs aligned martial spirit and sectional loyalties to become anthems of war. In the North, “Hail, Columbia,” “Yankee Doodle,” the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and Henry C. Work’s “Marching through Georgia” would give voice to the Union cause. In the South, it would be Daniel Emmett’s “Dixie,” “Maryland,” and Harry Macarthy’s “Bonnie Blue Flag.”
These popular standards betrayed all the same preoccupation with patriotism and glory seen in popular literature and the press. Nowhere to be found are the issues of war, the mystery of death, or conduct unbecoming a true soldier. Rather, the horror of war was subsumed under romantic themes of nostalgia, sentiment, bravery, and noble death. With music such as this, inspired soldiers could ride full fury into the fray in ever greater numbers, certain that family members at home revered their bravery and honored their memory.
The band of the Eighth New York State Militia, 1861. Military bands played indispensable roles in inculcating the patriotism that fueled soldiers’ and civilians’ participation in and support of the war.
Soldiers carried military tunes into the field and paraded to the airs of regimental bands. By 1861 military brass bands had become prevalent and displaced the earlier drum and fife corps. Wherever the military went, from recruiters to warriors, the bands followed. On November 20, 1861, a great mass of people converged at Bailey’s Cross Roads, near Fairfax, Virginia, to hear fifty regimental bands perform patriotic music. Of the one hundred thousand present, fifty to seventy thousand were soldiers ready to march with the regimental bands to such classics as “The Standard Bearer Quickstep,” or George F. Root’s “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching.”
The large-scale review was a spectacular and inspiring sight to soldier and citizen alike. Thousands of soldiers marching with military precision, hundreds of artillery pieces drawn by horses, and bands by the dozens appeared in order that the commanders and the public might view the immense military machine rendered even more dramatic by the stirring music. The massive procession stretched on for over a mile. As commanders rode by in review, a particular unit with attached musical organizations would proudly render their best selection from such national airs as “America,” “The Marseillaise,” or “Red, White, and Blue.”3
In the parade at Bailey’s Cross Roads, emotions peaked as General McClellan appeared with a cavalry escort. Soon he was joined by President Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon Cameron. Reporting on the regiments marching in review, a writer for the New York Times commented: “What strength was slumbering in that mighty host, and what death and carnage lay before it, when it should move on the foe. When the question of union and disunion was so glibly discussed by politicians on the stump, who ever dreamed he should live to behold such a sight as this?”4
On the home front, local and military bands provided public concerts that attracted enthusiastic audiences. Although the vast majority of Northern songs identified the preservation of the Union as the cause of war and ignored emancipation, one abolitionist songbook was put together by John Hutchinson of New Hampshire. Hutchinson built on abolitionist songs like Whittier’s “Hymn of Liberty” to equate the war with emancipation. One, entitled “Coming Right Along,” closed with the triumphant theme:No longer shall the bondman sigh beneath the galling fetters—
He sees the dawn of freedom nigh, and reads the golden letters.
Coming right along,
Coming right along,
Behold the day of freedom is coming right along!
Not to be outdone, the New York abolitionist James S. Gibbons wrote “We Are Coming, Father Abraham”—a tribute to Lincoln with strong abolitionist sentiments.
While popular with abolitionists, such music was not preferred in the North, where slavery was subordinated to patriotic love of Union. At one concert in Fairfax, Virginia, soldiers from New Jersey incited a riot when Hutchinson’s band played “Hymn of Liberty.” Only the intervention of two chaplains prevented the destruction of the band’s equipment.5
As with jeremiads, identical themes embodied the music of the Union and the Confederacy, revealing how much common ground they continued to share. Two songs’ sheet music sold by the millions in the North: “Yes, We’ll Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys” (“The Battle Cry of Freedom”) and “We Are Coming, Father Abraham.” Such was the popularity of “Rally’Round the Flag, Boys” that the Confederacy sang the same song with their own lyrics.
Much Union sheet music written before emancipation ignored slavery and concentrated on patriotism and loves left behind. In the North and the South, in music and art, the flag was ubiquitous. As national totem, the flag would also serve as a fierce catalyst for triumph. The flag song was a fight song: We’re in the right, and will prevail, the Stars and Stripes must fly;
The “Bonnie Blue Flag” will be hauled down and every traitor die,
Freedom and Peace enjoyed by all, as ne’er was known before,
Our Spangled Banner wave on high, with stars just Thirty Four.6
The theme of “Thirty-four Stars” became the subject of a song praising Union commanders and set in opposition to the Confederate “Bonnie Blue Flag”:The Rebels sing the “Bonnie Blue Flag” but we the “Stripes and Stars,”
Our Union Flag we love so true,
Will conquer their Stars and Bars;
Their Seceshairs, their Marylands,
Are contraband of war;
Our cause is right and the Flag for the fight,
Is one with thirty-four stars.
Chorus:
Hurrah! Hurrah! For equal rights Hurrah! Hurrah!
For the dear old Flag, with ev�
�ry Stripe and Star.
Another common song set to different lyrics by the North and the South was the anthem “Battle Cry of Freedom.” The Union chorus refrain, written by George F. Root, focused on Union and the flag:The Union forever, Hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitor, up with the star; While we rally ’round the flag, boys
Rally once again, Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.
The Confederate lyrics written by W. H. Barnes adapted it to an idea of freedom that emphasized “Dixie” and Christian faith:Our Dixie forever, she’s never at a loss
Down with the eagle, up with the cross, We’ll rally ’round the bonnie flag
We’ll rally once again, Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom.7
Of course, the mounting killing could not be ignored. But rendered in song, death like war became either sentimental or glorious. One of the most popular songs, also sung on both sides of the conflict, was “All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight.” In the North it was published as “The Picket’s Last Watch.” Its closing chorus told the story of a picket’s love and death at the hands of a sniper:Hark! was it the night wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it the moonlight so wond’rously flashing?
It looked like a rifle! “Ha! Mary, good-bye!”
And his life-blood is ebbing and splashing.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
No sound save the rush of the river,
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead,
“The Picket’s” off duty forever.8
Cowardice was every soldier’s greatest fear and a theme in many a letter, as well as in much of the music.9 In this citizens’ war, no one wanted to retreat or be shot in the back. In “Let Me Die Face to the Foe,” the last words of Brigadier General James C. Rice, Army of the Potomac, signaled the theme of bravery transcending death:I am wounded, soldiers, dying,
Send this word unto my wife
“I’ve been true unto my country
In her cause I yield my life. ”
Hark! the drums beat—victr‘ys ours!
Let me ask you ere I go
Comrades “turn me t’wards the traitors!
Let me die face to the foe!”
Even more than Northern music, Confederate songs offered no sense of moral ambiguity or irony, but instead celebrated the war without restraint. With the homeland under attack, the identification of war and the land assumed greater emphasis than in Northern music. In “The War Song of Dixie,” the theme of country, flag, and arms reaches a stirring crescendo:Southrons, hear your country call you,
Victory soon shall bring them gladness,
To arms! To arms! To arms! In Dixie!
Exultant pride soon banish sorrow;
Smiles chase tears away tomorrow,
To arms! to arms! To arms! In Dixie! 10
The one prominent exception that proves the general rule of musical mediocrity appeared first as a poem in the February 1862 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The poem was composed by Massachusetts abolitionist Julia Ward Howe and titled “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In fact, the poem had been written three months earlier on a sleepless night in Washington, D.C.
Howe visited the capital as part of a group that included her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, together with Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts and the Reverend James Freeman Clarke. The party had been granted a personal visit with President Lincoln at the White House, and later observed hundreds of soldiers in their lighted campground singing “John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave.” Clarke asked Howe if she could write a poem with some more appropriate, uplifting words.
Later, Howe recalled that night in the Old Willard Hotel, when her sleep was interrupted:I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight, and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, “I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.” So with a sudden effort I sprang out of bed and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper. I had learned to do this when, on previous occasions, attacks of versification had visited me in the night and I feared to have recourse to a light lest I should wake the baby, who slept near me.... At this time, having completed my writing, I returned to bed and fell asleep, saying to myself, “I like this better than most things that I have written.”11
Howe’s modesty produced an understatement. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” became widely sung in Union armies, especially after Gettysburg, and eventually enjoyed unrivaled status. During the war, Howe’s hymn never displaced “John Brown’s Body” as the soldiers’ favorite song. But in American memory, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” better served America’s future by linking the war less to patriotism than to abolition, in part reflecting the fact that Howe and her husband were abolitionists.
The early verses of the “Battle Hymn” bask in a martial glory common to many songs of the time. But in her triumphant conclusion, Howe reaches a transcendent identification of Christ’s sacrifice with emancipation: “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” As with the words of other abolitionists, Howe’s anthem helped transform the war’s meaning into a moral crusade of freedom that would outlive its creator. In American memory, the hymn would virtually define the war’s final meaning. For Lydia Maria Child, the “Battle Hymn” was an answer to her abolitionist prayer: “If the soldiers only had a Song, to some spirit-stirring tune, proclaiming what they went to fight for ... and indignantly announcing that they did not go to hunt slaves.”12
Precisely because of her transcendent moral gravitas and abolitionist subtheme, Howe’s “hymn” to America has remained the American song to emerge from the Civil War. More than any other song, it turned the war into something holy, hence beyond moral critique. In this regard, her earlier stanzas stand as more representative of the norm:Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
In his insightful analysis of this national hymn, Edmund Wilson observes that Howe’s God was not the gentle Christ of the lilies of the field (he was “born across the sea”), but the vengeful God of the Hebrew Bible ready to wreak vengeance on His enemies. The hymn is an urgent call to arms and promises victory over the enemies of Israel.13
In the North and the South, the dramatic performing arts evidenced a predictable moral avoidance. After an exhaustive review of Civil War-era plays, Rosemary L. Cullen discovered that during the war relatively few plays dealt with the subject of war at all. The closest was the 1852 dramatic rendering of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s celebrated novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was wildly popular on the stage during and after the war.
For the most part, however, the offerings were escapist and took on any theme but the war. As summarized by Cullen: “It became evident that audiences preferred rousing patriotic and military spectacles of a non-controversial nature to any mention of the real causes of the conflict.”14 Plays like Harry Seymour’s The Battle of Booneville or Charles Gayler’s The Stars and Stripes celebrated heroic generals and battles in a virtual sea of patriotism unconnected to the war. In the Confederacy, where paper was scarce, few plays were published. Those that found their way into print celebrated martial valor or pilloried Lincoln’s public and (supposed) private life.
Like the general public, President Lincoln was a great fan of the theater and attended Grover’s Theater and Ford’s Theater frequently. And like them, he had no interest in stage productions on the theme of the war. He preferred Shakespeare or comedy. It is perhaps ironic that before the war ended, one of his favorite actors, John Wilkes Booth, would carry the war directly into the theater to find and
shoot Lincoln himself.15
CHAPTER 13
“RELIGION HAS GROWN WARLIKE”
The battles of 1861 proved only one thing: despite its feeble origins, this war was destined to last a long time and become far more desperate. Between July 1861, when the first Battle of Bull Run was fought, and March 1862, Union and Confederate armies grew from a combined total of roughly three hundred thousand to more than one million.1 Inevitably the collisions would turn ever more brutal.
The spring campaigns of 1862 marked the last days of the West Point Code and of its unrepentant embodiment, General McClellan. Added to the sheer growth in numbers of troops were new weapons. Armies on both sides carried rifled muskets with conical bullets designed to increase distance, accuracy, and hitting power. At the same time tactics remained depressingly traditional, with both sides stubbornly employing close-order frontal assaults on entrenched defensive positions. Such was the power of culture—even military culture—that commanders resisted change, even though “tactical offenses” rarely carried well-placed entrenchments and invariably ate up casualties by the thousands.2
Just as tactics failed to keep pace with military technology, so also did medical technology fail. Ever larger and larger armies camped in close and often unsanitary winter quarters, prisons, and hospitals. Such conditions spread diseases so viciously that they took a third more lives than the battlefields themselves. In a letter to his wife, Private William Willoughby observed: “Our Regt is perhaps as healthy as any other yet we lose a man almost every day by disease.... We had when we left hartford some 800 or 900 men on dress parade we now scarsly [sic] number 400 the rest are all either killed wounded died or sick.”3
Upon the Altar of the Nation Page 16