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Title: Immortal Songs of Camp and Field
The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking
Anecdotes connected with their History
Author: Louis Albert Banks
Release Date: August 22, 2013 [EBook #43539]
Language: English
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[Illustration: bookcover]
IMMORTAL SONGS
OF
CAMP AND FIELD
[Illustration: _BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL_
(_From the celebrated painting by Trumbull_)]
[Illustration]
IMMORTAL SONGS
OF CAMP AND FIELD
_The Story of their Inspiration together
with Striking Anecdotes connected with
their History._[Illustration: decoration]
By
REV. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS, D.D.
Author of "Immortal Hymns and
Their Story," "Christ and His Friends"
"The Christian Gentleman," Etc. Etc.
[Illustration]
With Portraits and Illustrations
[Illustration]
CLEVELAND: The Burrows
Brothers Company,PUBLISHERS
_Mdcccxcix_
COPYRIGHT, 1898
BY
THE BURROWS BROTHERS CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Imperial Press
CLEVELAND
_To my sister_
_LACIBEL AINSWORTH WOOD_
_this volume is lovingly and gratefully
dedicated by the author_
[Illustration: CONTENTS]
_Page_
_The American Flag 17
Joseph Rodman Drake_
_Adams and Liberty 27
Robert Treat Paine_
_Yankee Doodle 41
Unknown_
_The Star-Spangled Banner 53
Francis Scott Key_
_Hail Columbia 67
Joseph Hopkinson_
_Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean 77
Thomas à Becket_
_The Flag of our Union 87
George P. Morris_
_John Brown's Body 97
Charles S. Hall_
_Dixie 109
Dan Emmett_
_The Battle Cry of Freedom 125
George F. Root_
_Song of a Thousand Years 137
Henry Clay Work_
_Tenting on the Old Camp Ground 149
Walter Kittredge_
_The Battle Hymn of the Republic 159
Julia Ward Howe_
_Just Before the Battle, Mother 171
George F. Root_
_When this Cruel War is Over 181
Charles Carroll Sawyer_
_Marching through Georgia 193
Henry Clay Work_
_My Maryland 205
James Ryder Randall_
_All Quiet Along the Potomac 217
Ethel Lynn Beers_
_The Old Folks at Home 227
Stephen Collins Foster_
_The Blue and the Gray 237
Francis Miles Finch_
_Rule, Britannia 249
James Thomson_
_The Watch on the Rhine 259
Max Schneckenburger_
_The Marseillaise 269
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle_
_The Blue Bells of Scotland 279
Annie McVicar Grant_
_Recessional 291
Rudyard Kipling_
[Illustration]
[Illustration: PORTRAITS]
_Page_
_Thomas à Becket 76_
_Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck-Schönhausen 258_
_John Brown 96_
_Joseph Rodman Drake 16_
_Daniel Decatur Emmett 108_
_Francis Miles Finch 236_
_Stephen Collins Foster 226_
_Ulysses Simpson Grant 216_
_Joseph Hopkinson 66_
_Julia Ward Howe 158_
_John Wallace Hutchinson 148_
_Francis Scott Key 52_
_Rudyard Kipling 290_
_La Fayette 268_
_Robert Edward Lee 204_
_Abraham Lincoln 124_
_George Pope Morris 86_
_Robert Treat Paine 26_
_Albert Pike 118_
_George Frederick Root 170_
_Charles Carroll Sawyer 180_
_William Tecumseh Sherman 192_
_Charles Edward Stuart, the Pretender 278_
_James Thomson 248_
_George Washington 40_
_Henry Clay Work 136_
[Illustration: _Bunker Hill Monument_]
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATIONS]
_Page_
_Battle of Bunker Hill Frontispiece_
_Bunker Hill Monument xii_
_Washington Monument xiv_
_Mount Hood 22_
_Statue of the Minuteman at Concord, Massachusetts 32_
_Liberty Bell 37_
_Boston Common 46_
_Fort McHenry 58_
_The Capitol 72_
_Statue of Liberty 80_
_West Point Military Academy 90_
_Harper's Ferry 102_
_Picking Cotton 112_
_Fort Sumter 130_
_The White House 142_
_Moccasin Bend 152_
_Faneuil Hall 164_
_Fortress Monroe 176_
_U. S. Battle-Ship "Maine" 186_
_Sherman burns Atlanta and marches toward the sea 198_
_Plymouth Rock 202_
_The Invasion of Maryland 210_
_Mount Vernon 222_
_"Still longin' for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home" 232_
_Grant's Monument 242_
_The Tower of London 254_
_National Monument, Niederwald 264_
_Vieux Port, Marseilles 274_
_Stirling Castle 284_
_Houses of Parliament 296_
[Illustration: _Washington Monument_]
[Illustration: JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE]
_THE AMERICAN FLAG._
When Freedom, from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there!
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land!
Majestic monarch of the cloud!
Who rear'st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest trumpings loud,
And see the lightning-lances driven,
When stride the warriors of the storm
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven!
Child of the sun! To thee 'tis given
To guard the banner of the free,
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of Victory.
Flag of the brave! Thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high!
When speaks the signal trumpet tone
And the long line comes gleaming on
(Ere yet the life-blood warm and wet
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet),
Each soldier eye shall brightly turn
To where thy sky-born glories burn,
And, as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance.
And when the cannon mouthing cloud
Heaves in wild wreaths the battle shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall,
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall;
There shall thy meteor-glances glow,
And cowering foes shall shrink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.
Flag of the seas! On ocean wave
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave;
When death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside's reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendors fly
In triumph o'er his closing eye.
Flag of the free heart's hope and home,
By angel hands to valor given;
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome
And all thy hues were born in heaven!
As fixed as yonder orb divine,
That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled,
Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine,
The guard and glory of the world.
--_Joseph Rodman Drake._
The author of _The American Flag_ was born to poverty, but by hard work
he obtained a good education, and studied medicine under Dr. Nicholas
Romayne, by whom he was greatly beloved. He obtained his degree and
shortly afterward, in October, 1816, he was married to Sarah Eckford,
who brought him a good deal of wealth. Two years later, his health
failing, he visited New Orleans for the winter, hoping for its recovery.
He returned to New York in the spring, only to die in the following
autumn, September, 1820, at the age of twenty-five. He is buried at
Hunt's Point, in Westchester County, New York, where he spent some of
the years of his boyhood. On his monument are these lines, written by
his friend, Fitz-Green Halleck,--
"None knew him but to love him,
Nor named him but to praise."
Drake was a poet from his childhood. The anecdotes preserved of his
early youth show the fertility of his imagination. His first rhymes were
a conundrum which he perpetrated when he was but five years old. He was
one day, for some childish offense, punished by imprisonment in a
portion of the garret shut off by some wooden bars. His sisters stole up
to witness his suffering condition, and found him pacing the room, with
something like a sword on his shoulder, watching an incongruous heap on
the floor, in the character of Don Quixote at his vigils over the armor
in the church. He called a boy of his acquaintance, named Oscar, "Little
Fingal;" his ideas from books thus early seeking embodiment in living
shapes. In the same spirit the child listened with great delight to the
stories of an old neighbor lady about the Revolution. He would identify
himself with the scene, and once, when he had given her a very energetic
account of a ballad which he had read, upon her remarking that it was a
tough story, he quickly replied, with a deep sigh: "Ah! we had it tough
enough that day, ma'am."
Drake wrote _The Mocking-Bird_, one of his poems which has lived and
will live, when a mere boy. It shows not only a happy facility but an
unusual knowledge of the imitative faculty in the young poets of his
time.
[Illustration: _MOUNT HOOD_]
_The American Flag_ was written in May, 1819, when the author was not
quite twenty-four. It has remained unchanged except the last four
lines. It originally concluded:--
"As fixed as yonder orb divine,
That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled,
Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine,
The guard and glory of the world."
These lines were very unsatisfactory to Drake, and he said to Fitz-Green
Halleck, "Fitz, can't you suggest a better stanza?" Whereupon the
brilliant author of _Marco Bozzaris_ sat down and wrote in a glowing
burst of inspiration the four concluding lines:--
"Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us?
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?"
Drake immediately agreed that these were a splendid improvement on the
former ending, and incorporated them into his one poem that is certain
of immortality. It was first published in the New York _Evening Post_,
in a series known as the _Croaker Pieces_, _The American Flag_ being the
last one of the series.
The young poet was entirely free from vanity and affectation, and had no
morbid seeking for popular applause. When he was on his deathbed, at his
wife's request, Doctor DeKay collected and copied all his poems which
could be found and took them to him. "See, Joe," said he to him, "what I
have done." "Burn them," he replied; "they are valueless."
Drake's impulsive nature, as well as the spirit and force, yet
simplicity, of expression, with his artless manner, gained him many
friends. He had that native politeness which springs from
benevolence--that would stop to pick up the hat or the crutch of an old
servant, or fly to the relief of a child. His acquaintance with
Fitz-Green Halleck arose in a romantic incident on the Battery one day
when, in a retiring shower, the heavens were spanned by a rainbow. DeKay
and Drake were together, and Halleck, a new acquaintance, was talking
with them; the conversation taking the turn of some passing expression
of the wishes of the moment, Halleck whimsically remarked that it would
be heaven for him, just then, to ride on that rainbow and read Campbell.
The idea was very pleasing to Drake. He seized Halleck by the hand and
from that moment until his untimely death they were bosom friends.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _ROBERT TREAT PAINE_]
_ADAMS AND LIBERTY._
Ye sons of Columbia, who bravely have fought
For those rights which unstain'd from your sires had descended,
May you long taste the blessings your valor has bought,
And your sons reap the soil which your fathers defended!
'Mid the reign of mild peace,
May your nation increase,
With the glory of Rome, and the wisdom of Greece.
And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
In a clime whose rich vales feed the marts of the world,
Whose shores are unshaken by Europe's commotion,
The trident of Commerce should never be hurl'd
To increase the legitimate powers of the ocean.
But should pirates invade,
Though in thunder array'd,
Let your cannon declare the free charter of trade;
For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
The fame of our arms, of our laws the mild sway,
Had justly ennobled our nation in story,
Till the dark clouds of faction obscured our young day,
And enveloped the sun of American glory.
But let traitors be told,
Who their country have sold,
And bartered their God for his image in gold,
That ne'er will the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
While France her huge limbs bathes recumbent in blood,
And society's base threats with wide dissolution;
May peace, like the dove who return'd from the flood,
Find an ark of abode in our mild constitution.
But, though peace is our aim,
Yet the boon we disclaim,
If bought by our sovereignty, justice, or fame;
For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
'Tis the fire of the flint each American warms:
Let Rome's haughty victors beware of collision;
Let them bring all the vassals of Europe in arms,
We're a world by ourselves, and disdain a provision.
While with patriot pride
To our laws we're allied,
No foe can subdue us, no faction divide;
For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
Our mountains are crown'd with imperial oak,
Whose roots, like our liberties, ages have nourish'd;
But long ere our nation submits to the yoke,
Not a tree shall be left on the field where it flourish'd.
Should invasion impend,
Every grove would descend
From the hilltops they shaded our shores to defend;
For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
Let our patriots destroy Anarch's pestilent worm,
Lest our liberty's growth should be check'd by corrosion;
Then let clouds thicken round us: we heed not the storm;
Our realm fears no shock, but the earth's own explosion.
Foes assail us in vain,
Though their fleets bridge the main,
For our altars and laws with our lives we'll maintain;
For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
Should the tempest of war overshadow our land,
Its bolts could ne'er rend Freedom's temple asunder;
For, unmov'd, at its portal would Washington stand,
And repulse with his breast the assaults of the thunder!
His sword from the sleep
Of its scabbard would leap,
And conduct, with its point, every flash to the deep;
For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
Let Fame to the world sound America's voice;
No intrigues can her sons from their government sever:
Her pride is her Adams, their laws are his choice,
And shall flourish till Liberty slumbers forever.
Then unite heart and hand,
Like Leonidas' band,
And swear to the God of the ocean and land,
That ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
--_Robert Treat Paine._
[Illustration: _STATUE OF THE MINUTEMAN AT CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS_]
The father of the author of _Adams and Liberty_, or as it has been more
usually entitled in later days, _Ye Sons of Columbia_, was the Robert
Treat Paine who was one of the immortal signers of the Declaration of
Independence. The author of this hymn was given by his parents the
name of Thomas, but on account of that being the name of a notorious
infidel of his time, he appealed to the legislature of Massachusetts to
give him a _Christian_ name; thereafter he took the name of his father,
Robert Treat Paine.
He was a very precocious and brilliant youth. When he was seven years of
age his family removed from Taunton, where he was born, to Boston, and
there he prepared for Harvard College at one of the public schools,
entering the freshman class in his fifteenth year. One of his classmates
wrote a squib on him in verse on the college wall, and Paine, on
consultation with his friends, being advised to retaliate in kind, did
so, and thus became aware of the poetic faculty of which he afterward
made such liberal use. He wrote nearly all his college compositions in
verse, with such success that he was assigned the post of poet at the
College Exhibition in the autumn of 1791, and at the Commencement in the
following year. After receiving his diploma, he entered the
counting-room of Mr. James Tisdale, but soon proved that his tastes did
not lie in that direction. He would often be carried away by day-dreams
and make entries in his day-book in poetry. On one occasion when he was
sent to the bank with a check for five hundred dollars, he met some
literary acquaintances on the way and went off with them to Cambridge,
and spent a week in the enjoyment of "the feast of reason and the flow
of soul," returning to his duties with the cash at the end of that
period.
In 1792 young Paine fell deeply in love with an actress, a Miss Baker,
aged sixteen, who was one of the first players to appear in Boston.
Their performances were at first called dramatic recitations to avoid a
collision with a law forbidding "stage plays." He married Miss Baker in
1794, and was promptly turned out of doors by his father.
The next year, on taking his degree of A.M. at Cambridge, he delivered a
poem entitled _The Invention of Letters_. There was a great deal of
excitement over this poem at the time, as it contained some lines
referring to Jacobinism, which the college authorities crossed out, but
which he delivered as written. The poem was greatly admired, and
Washington wrote him a letter in appreciation of its merits. It was
immediately published and large editions sold, the author receiving
fifteen hundred dollars as his share of the profits, which was no doubt
a very grateful return to a poet with a young wife and an obdurate
father. The breach with his family, however, was afterward healed.
Mr. Paine was also the author of a poem entitled _The Ruling Passion_,
for which he received twelve hundred dollars. Still another famous poem
of his was called _The Steeds of Apollo_.
In 1794 he produced his earliest ode, _Rise, Columbia_, which,
perhaps, was the seed thought from which later sprang the more extended
hymn,--
"When first the sun o'er ocean glow'd
And earth unveil'd her virgin breast,
Supreme 'mid Nature's vast abode
Was heard th' Almighty's dread behest:
'Rise, Columbia, brave and free,
Poise the globe, and bound the sea.'"
His most famous song, _Adams and Liberty_,--which is sung to the same
tune as Key's _Star-Spangled Banner_, or _Anacreon in Heaven_,--was
written four years later at the request of the Massachusetts Charitable
Fire Society. Its sale yielded him a profit of more than seven hundred
and fifty dollars. These receipts show an immediate popularity which has
seldom been achieved by patriotic songs. In 1799 he delivered an oration
on the first anniversary of the dissolution of the alliance with France
which was a great oratorical triumph. The author sent a copy, after its
publication, to Washington, and received a reply in which the General
says: "You will be assured that I am never more gratified than when I
see the effusions of genius from some of the rising generation, which
promises to secure our national rank in the literary world; as I trust
their firm, manly, and patriotic conduct will ever maintain it with
dignity in the political."
The next to the last stanza of _Adams and Liberty_ was not in the song
as originally written. Paine was dining with Major Benjamin Russell,
when he was reminded that his song had made no mention of Washington.
The host said he could not fill his glass until the error had been
corrected, whereupon the author, after a moment's thinking, scratched
off the lines which pay such a graceful tribute to the First American:--
"Should the tempest of war overshadow our land,
Its bolts could ne'er rend Freedom's temple asunder;
For, unmov'd, at its portal would Washington stand,
And repulse with his breast the assaults of the thunder!
His sword from the sleep
Of its scabbard would leap,
And conduct, with its point, every flash to the deep;
For ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves."
Instead of being added to the hymn it was inserted as it here appears.
The second, fourth, and fifth stanzas have been usually omitted in
recent publications of the hymn.
The brilliant genius of Paine was sadly eclipsed by strong drink, that
dire foe of many men of bright literary promise. His sun, which had
risen so proudly, found an untimely setting about the beginning of the
war of 1812.
[Illustration: _Liberty Bell_]
[Illustration: _GEORGE WASHINGTON_]
_YANKEE DOODLE._
Father and I went down to camp
Along with Captain Gooding,
And there we saw the men and boys,
As thick as hasty pudding.
Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle Dandy!
Mind the music and the step,
And with the gals be handy!
And there we see a thousand men
As rich as Squire David,
And what they wasted every day,--
I wish it had been savèd.
The 'lasses they eat up every day
Would keep our house all winter,--
They have so much that I'll be bound
They eat whene'er they've a mind to.
And there we see a whopping gun,
As big as a log of maple,
Mounted on a little cart,--
A load for father's cattle.
And every time they fired it off
It took a horn of powder,
And made a noise like father's gun,
Only a nation louder.
I went as near to it
As 'Siah's underpinning;
Father went as nigh agin,--
I thought the devil was in him.
Cousin Simon grew so bold,
I thought he meant to cock it;
He scared me so, I streaked it off,
And hung to father's pocket.
And Captain Davis had a gun
He kind o' clapped his hand on,
And stuck a crooked stabbing-iron
Upon the little end on 't.
And there I saw a pumpkin shell
As big as mother's basin;
And every time they sent one off,
They scampered like tarnation.
I saw a little bar'el, too,
Its heads were made of leather;
They knocked on it with little plugs,
To call the folks together.
And there was Captain Washington,
With grand folks all about him;
They says he's grown so tarnal proud,
He cannot ride without them.
He had on his meeting-clothes,
And rode a slapping stallion,
And gave his orders to the men,--
I guess there was a million.
And then the feathers in his hat,
They were so tarnal fine-ah,
I wanted peskily to get
To hand to my Jemima.
And then they'd fife away like fun
And play on cornstalk fiddles;
And some had ribbons red as blood
All wound about their middles.
The troopers, too, would gallop up,
And fire right in our faces;
It scared me a'most to death
To see them run such races.
And then I saw a snarl of men
A-digging graves, they told me,
So tarnal long, so tarnal deep,--
They allowed they were to hold me.
It scared me so I hooked it off,
Nor stopped as I remember,
Nor turned about, till I got home,
Locked up in mother's chamber.
It is certainly the tune of _Yankee Doodle_, and not the words of this
old song, which captured the fancy of the country and held its sway in
America for nearly a hundred and fifty years.
The tune, however, is much older than that. It has been claimed in many
lands. When Kossuth was in this country making his plea for liberty for
Hungary, he informed a writer of the Boston _Post_ that, when the
Hungarians that accompanied him first heard _Yankee Doodle_ on a
Mississippi River steamer, they immediately recognized it as one of the
old national airs of their native land, one played in the dances of that
country, and they began to caper and dance as they had been accustomed
to do in Hungary.
It has been claimed also in Holland as an old harvest song. It is said
that when the laborers received for wages "as much buttermilk as they
could drink, and a tenth of the grain," they used to sing as they
reaped, to the tune of _Yankee Doodle_, the words,--
"Yanker, didel, doodle down,
Diddle, dudel, lanther,
Yanke viver, voover vown,
Botermilk und tanther."
[Illustration: _BOSTON COMMON
(Beacon Street Mall)_]
From Spain, also, comes a claim. The American Secretary of Legation, Mr.
Buckingham Smith, wrote from Madrid under date of June 3, 1858: "The
tune of _Yankee Doodle_, from the first of my showing it here, has been
acknowledged, by persons acquainted with music, to bear a strong
resemblance to the popular airs of Biscay; and yesterday, a
professor from the north recognized it as being much like the ancient
sword-dance played on solemn occasions by the people of San Sebastian.
He says the tune varies in those provinces. The first strains are
identically those of the heroic Danza Esparta of brave old Biscay."
France puts in a claim, and declares that _Yankee Doodle_ is an old
vintage song from the southern part of that land of grapes; while Italy,
too, claims _Yankee Doodle_ for her own.
The probabilities are that it was introduced into England from Holland.
_Yankee Doodle_ became an American institution in June, 1755. General
Braddock, of melancholy fate, was gathering the colonists to an
encampment near Albany for an attack on the French and Indians at
Niagara. The countrymen came into camp in a medley of costumes, from the
buckskins and furs of the American Indian to some quaint old-fashioned
military heirloom of a century past. The British soldiers made great
sport of their ragged clothes and the quaint music to which they
marched. There was among these regular troops from England a certain Dr.
Richard Shuckburg, who could not only patch up human bodies, but had a
great facility in patching up tunes as well. As these grotesque
countrymen marched into camp, this quick-witted doctor recalled the old
air which was sung by the cavaliers in ridicule of Cromwell, who was
said to have ridden into Oxford on a small horse with his single plume
fastened into a sort of knot which was derisively called a "macaroni."
The words were,--
"Yankee Doodle came to town,
Upon a Kentish pony;
He stuck a feather in his cap,
Upon a macaroni."
Doctor Shuckburg at once began to plan a joke upon the uncouth
newcomers. He set down the notes of _Yankee Doodle_, wrote along with
them the lively travesty upon Cromwell, and gave them to the militia
musicians as the latest martial music of England. The band quickly
caught the simple and contagious air which would play itself, and in a
few hours it was sounding through the camp amid the laughter of the
British soldiers. It was a very prophetic piece of fun, however, which
became significant a few years later. When the battles of Concord and
Lexington began the Revolutionary War, the English, when proudly
advancing, played along the road _God save the King_; but after they had
been routed, and were making their disastrous retreat, the Americans
followed them with the taunting _Yankee Doodle_.
It was only twenty-five years after Doctor Shuckburg's joke when Lord
Cornwallis marched into the lines of these same old ragged Continentals
to surrender his army and his sword to the tune of _Yankee Doodle_.
Francis Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, one of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence, and the father of Joseph Hopkinson, the
author of _Hail Columbia_, adapted the words of his famous song _The
Battle of the Kegs_, to the tune of _Yankee Doodle_. David Bushnell, the
inventor of the torpedo, in December, 1777, had set adrift at night a
large number of kegs charged with gunpowder, which were designed to
explode on coming in contact with the British vessels in the Delaware.
They failed in their object, but, exploding in the vicinity, created
intense alarm in the fleet, which kept up for hours a continuous
discharge of cannon and small arms at every object in the river. This
was "the battle of the kegs."
Verses without number have been sung to the tune of _Yankee Doodle_, but
the ballad given here is the one that was best known and most frequently
sung during the war for independence. They are said to have been written
by a gentleman of Connecticut whose name has not survived. The exact
date of their first publication is not known, but as these verses were
sung at the Battle of Bunker Hill it must have been as early as 1775.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _FRANCIS SCOTT KEY_]
_THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER._
O say, can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming!
And the rocket's red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam
Of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save
The hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Oh, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must,
When our cause it is just,
And this be our motto--"In God is our trust:"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
--_Francis Scott Key._
No song could have had a more inspiring source of creation than did
this. Its author, Mr. Francis Scott Key, was a young lawyer who left
Baltimore in September, 1814, while the war of 1812 was yet going on,
and under a flag of truce visited the British fleet for the purpose of
obtaining the release of a friend of his, a certain Doctor Beanes, who
had been captured at Marlborough. After his arrival at the fleet he was
compelled to remain with it during the bombardment of Fort McHenry, as
the officers were afraid to permit him to land lest he should disclose
the purposes of the British. Mr. Key remained on deck all night,
watching every shell from the moment it was fired until it fell, and
listening with breathless interest to hear if an explosion followed. The
firing suddenly ceased before day, but from the position of the ship he
could not discover whether the fort had surrendered or the attack had
been abandoned. He paced the deck for the remainder of the night in
painful suspense, watching with intense anxiety for the return of day,
and looking every few minutes at his watch to see how long he must wait
for it; and as soon as it dawned, and before it was light enough to see
objects at a distance, his glass was turned to the fort, uncertain
whether he should see there the Stars and Stripes or the flag of the
enemy. At length the light came, and he saw that "our flag was still
there;" and as the day advanced he discovered from the movement of the
boats between the shore and the fleet that the English troops had been
defeated, and that many wounded men were being carried to the ships. At
length Mr. Key was informed that the attack on Baltimore had failed, and
he with his friend was permitted to return home, while the hostile
fleet sailed away, leaving the Star-Spangled Banner still waving from
Fort McHenry.
During the intense anxiety of waiting for dawn, Mr. Key had conceived
the idea of the song and had written some lines, or brief notes that
would aid him in calling them to mind, upon the back of a letter which
he happened to have in his pocket. He finished the poem in the boat on
his way to the shore, and finally corrected it, leaving it as it now
stands, at the hotel, on the night he reached Baltimore, and immediately
after he arrived. The next morning he took it to Judge Nicholson, the
chief justice of Maryland, to ask him what he thought of it; and he was
so pleased with it that he immediately sent it to the printer, Benjamin
Edes, and directed copies to be struck off in handbill form. In less
than an hour after it was placed in the hands of the printer it was all
over the town, and hailed with enthusiasm, and at once took its place in
the national songs. The first newspaper that printed it was the
_American_, of Baltimore.
[Illustration: _FORT McHENRY_]
The tune, which has helped so much to make it famous, also had an
interesting selection. Two brothers, Charles and Ferdinand Durang, were
actors at the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore, but were also
soldiers. A copy of Francis Key's poem came to them in camp; it was read
aloud to a company of the soldiers, among whom were the Durang
brothers. All were inspired by the pathetic eloquence of the song and
Ferdinand Durang at once put his wits to work to find a tune for it.
Hunting up a volume of flute music which was in one of the tents, he
impatiently whistled snatches of tune after tune, just as they caught
his quick eye. One, called _Anacreon in Heaven_, struck his fancy and
riveted his attention. Note after note fell from his puckered lips
until, with a leap and shout, he exclaimed, "Boys, I've hit it!" And
fitting the tune to the words, there rang out for the first time the
song of _The Star-Spangled Banner_. How the men shouted and clapped; for
there never was a wedding of poetry to music made under more inspiring
influences! Getting a brief furlough, the Durang brothers sang it in
public soon after. It was caught up in the camps, and sung around the
bivouac fires, and whistled in the streets, and when peace was declared,
and the soldiers went back to their homes, they carried this song in
their hearts as the most precious souvenir of the war of 1812.
The song bears evidence of the special incident to which it owes its
creation, and is not suited to all times and occasions on that account.
To supply this want, additional stanzas have, from time to time, been
written. Perhaps the most notable of all these is the following stanza,
which was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, at the request of a lady,
during our civil war, there being no verse alluding to treasonable
attempts against the flag. It was originally printed in the Boston
_Evening Transcript_.
"When our land is illumined with liberty's smile,
If a foe from within strike a blow at her glory,
Down, down with the traitor who dares to defile
The flag of her stars and the page of her story!
By the millions unchained
Who their birthright have gained
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
While the land of the free is the home of the brave."
The air selected under such interesting circumstances as we have
described--_Anacreon in Heaven_,--is that of an old English song. In the
second half of the eighteenth century a jovial society, called the
"Anacreontic," held its festive and musical meetings at the "Crown and
Anchor" in the Strand. It is now the "Whittington Club;" but in the last
century it was frequented by Doctor Johnson, Boswell, Sir Joshua
Reynolds and others. One Ralph Tomlinson, Esq., was at that time
president of the Anacreontic Society, and wrote the words of the song
adopted by the club, and John Stafford Smith set them to music, it is
claimed to an old French air. The song was published by the composer,
and was sold at his house, 7 Warwick Street, Spring Garden, London,
between the years 1770-75. Thus the source of the music so long
identified with this inspiring song is swallowed up in the mystery of
the name of Smith.
The flag of Fort McHenry, which inspired the song, still exists in a
fair state of preservation. It is at this time thirty-two feet long and
of twenty-nine feet hoist. In its original dimensions it was probably
forty feet long; the shells of the enemy, and the work of curiosity
hunters, have combined to decrease its length. Its great width is due to
its having fifteen instead of thirteen stripes, each nearly two feet
wide. It has, or rather had, fifteen five-pointed stars, each two feet
from point to point, and arranged in five indented parallel lines, three
stars in each horizontal line. The Union rests in the ninth, which is a
red stripe, instead of the eighth, a white stripe, as in our present
flag. There can be no doubt as to the authenticity of this flag. It was
preserved by Colonel Armstead, and bears upon its stripes, in his
autograph, his name and the date of the bombardment. It has always
remained in his family and in 1861 his widow bequeathed it to their
youngest daughter, Mrs. William Stuart Appleton, who, some time after
the bombardment, was born in Fort McHenry under its folds. She was named
Georgians Armstead for her father, and the precious flag was hoisted on
its staff in honor of her birth. Mrs. Appleton died in New York, July
25, 1878, and bequeathed the flag to her son, Mr. Eben Appleton, of
Yonkers, New York, who now holds it.
_The Star-Spangled Banner_ has come out of the Spanish War baptized with
imperishable glory. Throughout the war it has been above all others, in
camp or on the battlefield, the song that has aroused the highest
enthusiasm. During the bombardment of Manila the band on a British
cruiser, lying near the American fleet, played _The Star-Spangled
Banner_, thus showing in an unmistakable way their sympathy with the
American cause. In the trenches before Santiago it was sung again and
again by our soldiers and helped, more than anything else, to inspire
them to deeds of heroic valor. Once when the army moved forward in the
charge, the man who played the E-flat horn in the band left his place
and rushed forward with the soldiers in the attacking column. Of course
the band's place is in the rear. But this man, unmindful of everything,
broke away and went far up the hill with the charge, carrying his horn
over his shoulder, slung with a strap. For a time he went along
unobserved, until one of the officers happened to see him. And he said
to him, "What are you doing here? You can't do anything; you can't
fight; you haven't any gun or sword. This is no place for you. Get down
behind that rock." The soldier fell back for a minute, half dazed, and
feeling the pull of the strap on his shoulder cried out in agony: "I
can't do anything, I can't fight." And so he got down behind the rock.
But almost instantly he raised his horn and began to play _The
Star-Spangled Banner_. They heard him down in the valley, and
immediately the band took it up, and in the midst of those inspiring
strains the army charged to victory.
[Illustration: _JOSEPH HOPKINSON_]
_HAIL COLUMBIA._
Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoy'd the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize,
Let its altars reach the skies.
Firm, united, let us be,
Rallying round our Liberty;
As a band of brothers join'd,
Peace and safety we shall find.
Immortal patriots! rise once more:
Defend your rights, defend your shore:
Let no rude foe, with impious hand,
Let no rude foe, with impious hand,
Invade the shrine where sacred lies
Of toil and blood the well-earn'd prize.
While offering peace sincere and just,
In Heaven we place a manly trust,
That truth and justice will prevail,
And every scheme of bondage fail.
Sound, sound, the trump of Fame!
Let WASHINGTON'S great name
Ring through the world with loud applause,
Ring through the world with loud applause;
Let every clime to Freedom dear,
Listen with a joyful ear.
With equal skill, and Godlike power,
He govern'd in the fearful hour
Of horrid war; or guides with ease,
The happier times of honest peace.
Behold the chief who now commands,
Once more to serve his country stands,
The rock on which the storm will beat;
The rock on which the storm will beat.
But, arm'd in virtue firm and true,
His hopes are fix'd on Heaven and you.
When hope was sinking in dismay,
And glooms obscured Columbia's day,
His steady mind, from changes free,
Resolved on death or liberty.
--_Joseph Hopkinson._
Joseph Hopkinson, like Francis Scott Key, the author of _The
Star-Spangled Banner_, was also a lawyer. He commenced the practice of
law in Easton, Pennsylvania, but soon removed to Philadelphia, where he
acquired high distinction at the bar. He was four years a member of
Congress, and was afterward appointed judge of the United States
District Court, an office held by his grandfather under the British
Crown before the Revolutionary War, and to which his father had been
chosen on the organization of the United States Judiciary in 1789. He
retained this office until his death in 1842.
Mr. Hopkinson was still a young man, only twenty-eight years of age,
when he wrote the song which will make his name honored as long as
American liberty is remembered. It was in the summer of 1798, when a war
with France was thought to be inevitable. Congress was in session in
Philadelphia, discussing the advisability of a declaration of war, and
many acts of hostility had actually occurred. England and France were at
war already, and the people of the United States were divided into
factions for the one side or the other. One party argued that policy and
duty required Americans to take part with republican France; the other
section urged the wisdom of connecting ourselves with England, under the
belief that she was the great conservator of modern civilization, and
that her triumph meant the rule of good principles and safe government.
Both belligerents had been careless of our rights, and seemed to be
forcing us from the just and wise policy of Washington, which was to
maintain a strict and impartial neutrality between them. The prospect of
a rupture with France was exceedingly offensive to that portion of the
people who hoped for her success, and the violence of party spirit ran
to the highest extreme.
Just at this time a young singer who was very popular in Philadelphia
was to be given a benefit at one of the theaters. This young man was a
school friend of Joseph Hopkinson. They had kept up their acquaintance
after their school-days had passed, and one Saturday afternoon he called
on Hopkinson to talk over with him his benefit which was announced for
the following Monday. He said he had every prospect of suffering a loss
instead of receiving a benefit from the performance; but that if he
could get a patriotic song adapted to the tune of the _President's
March_, then the popular air, he would no doubt have a full house. The
poor fellow was almost in despair about it, as the poets of the
theatrical corps had been trying to accomplish it, and had come to the
conclusion that no words could be composed to suit the music of that
march. The young lawyer told his friend that he would try what he could
do for him. He came the next afternoon, and the song, _Hail Columbia_,
was ready for him. It was announced on Monday morning, and the theater
was crowded to overflowing, and so continued, night after night, for the
rest of the season. The excitement about it grew so great that the song
was not only encored but had to be repeated many times each night, the
audience joining in the chorus. It was also sung at night in the
streets by large crowds of citizens, which often included members of
Congress and other distinguished public officials. The enthusiasm spread
to other cities and the song was caught up and reëchoed at all kinds of
public gatherings throughout the United States.
[Illustration: _THE CAPITOL_]
The object of Mr. Hopkinson in writing the song, in addition to doing a
kind deed for his friend and schoolmate, was to arouse an American
spirit which should be independent of and above the interests, passions,
and policy of both belligerents, and look and feel exclusively for our
own honor and rights. For this reason no allusion was made to France or
England, or to the war which was raging between them, or to our
indignation as to their treatment of us. It was this prudence which gave
the song its universal popularity. It found equal favor with both
parties, for neither could disown the loyal sentiments it inculcated. It
was so purely American, and nothing else, that the patriotic feelings of
every American heart responded to it.
The _President's March_, for which the poem was specially written and to
which it was easily adapted, was composed in honor of President
Washington, who then resided at 190 High Street, Philadelphia. The
composer of the popular air was Philip Roth, a teacher of music. Not a
great deal is left on record about him, but it is declared that he was a
very eccentric character, familiarly known as "Old Roat." It is also
said that he took snuff immoderately. A claim has been set up for
Professor Phyla, of Philadelphia, but the evidence favors Roth.
During the centennial year an autograph copy of _Hail Columbia_ was
displayed in the museum at Independence Hall, Philadelphia. This copy
was written from memory, February 22, 1828, and presented to George M.
Kein, Esq., of Reading, in compliance with a request made by him. This
interesting manuscript has marginal notes, one of which informs us that
the lines:--
"Behold the chief who now commands,
Once more to serve his country stands,
The rock on which the storm will beat;
The rock on which the storm will beat.
But, arm'd in virtue firm and true,
His hopes are fix'd on Heaven and you.
When hope was sinking in dismay,
And glooms obscured Columbia's day,
His steady mind, from changes free,
Resolved on death or liberty,"
refer to John Adams, who was President of the United States at the time
_Hail Columbia_ was written. Mr. Hopkinson also presented General
Washington with an autograph copy of his poem, and received from him a
complimentary letter of thanks, which is now in possession of his
descendants.
[Illustration: _THOMAS À BECKET_]
_COLUMBIA, THE GEM OF THE OCEAN._
O Columbia! the gem of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free;
The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
A world offers homage to thee.
Thy mandates make heroes assemble
When Liberty's form stands in view,
Thy banners make tyranny tremble
When borne by the red, white, and blue,
When borne by the red, white, and blue,
When borne by the red, white, and blue,
Thy banners make tyranny tremble
When borne by the red, white, and blue.
When war winged its wide desolation,
And threaten'd the land to deform;
The ark then of Freedom's foundation,
Columbia, rode safe through the storm:
With her garlands of vict'ry around her,
When so proudly she bore her brave crew,
With her flag proudly floating before her,
The boast of the red, white, and blue,
The boast of the red, white, and blue,
The boast of the red, white, and blue,
With her flag proudly floating before her,
The boast of the red, white, and blue.
The winecup, the winecup bring hither,
And fill you it true to the brim;
May the wreaths they have won never wither
Nor the star of their glory grow dim.
May the service united ne'er sever,
But they to their colors prove true,
The Army and Navy forever,
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue,
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue,
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue,
The Army and Navy forever,
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue.
--_Thomas à Becket._
This splendid song, as popular, perhaps, as any of America's patriotic
hymns, was written in 1843 by a young actor named Thomas à Becket. He
was engaged at that time at the Chestnut Street Theater, in
Philadelphia. He was waited upon by a Mr. D. T. Shaw, an acquaintance,
who was also an actor, with the request that he would write him a song
for his benefit night. Mr. Shaw had been trying to write one for
himself, but had made a sad failure of it. He produced some patriotic
lines, and asked Mr. À Becket's opinion on them; he found them
ungrammatical and so deficient in measure as to be totally unfit to be
set to music. They went to the house of a mutual friend, and there À
Becket wrote the two first verses in pencil, and sitting down at a
piano in the room of the friend's house, he composed the melody. On
reaching home that evening he added the third verse, wrote the
symphonies and arrangements, made a fair copy in ink, and gave it to Mr.
Shaw, requesting him not to give or sell a copy to any one.
[Illustration: _STATUE OF LIBERTY_]
A few weeks afterward Mr. À Becket left for New Orleans, and a little
while later was greatly astonished to see a published copy of his song
entitled, "_Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean_, written, composed, and sung
by David T. Shaw, and arranged by T. à Becket, Esq." On his return to
Philadelphia he sought out Mr. Willig, the publisher, who told him he
had purchased the song from Mr. Shaw. Mr. À Becket produced the original
copy in pencil, and claimed the copyright, which Mr. Willig admitted,
making some severe remarks upon Shaw's conduct in the affair. A week
later it appeared under its proper title, "_Columbia, the Gem of the
Ocean_, written and composed by T. à Becket, and sung by D. T. Shaw."
The song has been often printed under the title _The Red, White, and
Blue_, and is very familiarly known as "The Army and Navy Song," from
being peculiarly adapted to reunions of the two wings of the military
department of the government.
Mr. E. L. Davenport, an eminent actor, sung the song nightly in London
for many weeks, where it became very popular. It was printed there
under the title _Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean_. On this account
some people have supposed the English version to be the original, and
ours merely an adaptation of it. That part of its title, "The Gem of the
Ocean," belongs to the Emerald Isle, rather than to Columbia, and seems
more appropriate to designate an island power like Great Britain than a
continental power like the United States. However, it is beginning to
look as though we might have islands of our own in abundance.
While red, white, and blue have for a long time been the ranking order
of the colors of British national ensigns, with us _blue_--the blue of
the union, the firmament of our constellation of stars--claims the first
place on our colors, red the second, and white the third; so that for us
the song should read,--
"When borne by the blue, red, and white,"
instead of,--
"When borne by the red, white, and blue."
These lapses are explained by the fact that the author was an Englishman
by birth, and it was very natural that he should make them. Though
written by a native-born Englishman, the song was thoroughly American in
its inception and origin. In the English version, already referred to,
the first line is altered to read,--
"Britannia, the pride of the ocean."
In these days of kindly fellowship with England, Americans are perfectly
willing to share their song of "red, white, and blue" with their cousins
across the water.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _GEORGE POPE MORRIS_]
_THE FLAG OF OUR UNION._
A song for our banner, the watchword recall
Which gave the Republic her station:
"United we stand--divided we fall!"
It made and preserves us a nation.
The union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever!
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the Flag of our Union forever and ever,
The Flag of our Union forever!
What God in his infinite wisdom designed,
And armed with republican thunder,
Not all the earth's despots and factions combined
Have the power to conquer or sunder.
The union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever!
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the Flag of our Union forever and ever,
The Flag of our Union forever!
Oh, keep that flag flying! The pride of the van!
To all other nations display it!
The ladies for union are to a--man!
And not to the man who'd betray it.
Then the union of lakes, the union of lands,
The union of States none can sever!
The union of hearts, the union of hands,
And the Flag of the Union forever!
--_George P. Morris._
The author of _The Flag of our Union_ was one of the most distinguished
journalists of the early half of the nineteenth century in America. He
was for many years the editor of the _Mirror_, which was in its time the
best literary magazine in the country. Such men as William Cullen
Bryant, Fitz-Green Halleck, Nathaniel P. Willis, Theodore S. Fay, and
Epes Sargent found in its pages a chance to express the poetry, romance,
and philosophy which flowed from their brilliant and graceful pens.
Morris was the author of many songs and poems that have become household
words throughout the land. Who does not recall,--
"Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I'll protect it now.
'Twas my forefather's hand
That placed it near his cot:
There, woodman, let it stand,
Thy ax shall harm it not!"
And these other lines from _My Mother's Bible_, equally well
known,--
[Illustration: _WEST POINT MILITARY ACADEMY_
(_N. E. corner of cadets' barracks_)]
"This book is all that's left me now:--
Tears will unbidden start--
With faltering lip and throbbing brow,
I press it to my heart.
For many generations past
Here is our family tree:
My mother's hand this Bible clasped;
She, dying, gave it me."
And what schoolboy of twenty-five years ago does not remember the song
of _The Whip-poor-will_, the first verses of which always aroused his
sympathetic interest?--
"Why dost thou come at set of sun,
Those pensive words to say?
Why whip poor Will?--what has he done--
And who is Will, I pray?
"Why come from yon leaf-shaded hill
A suppliant at my door?--
Why ask of me to whip poor Will?
And is Will really poor?"
Morris had traveled abroad rather widely for that day, but instead of
its weaning him from his native land, it made it all the more dear to
him. He set this forth in a well-known song entitled, _I'm with You once
Again_, which so accurately voices the feelings of thousands of loyal
American travelers that it is worth repeating here:--
"I'm with you once again, my friends,
No more my footsteps roam;
Where it began my journey ends,
Amid the scenes of home.
No other clime has skies so blue,
Or streams so broad and clear,
And where are hearts so warm and true
As those that meet me here?
"Since last, with spirits wild and free,
I pressed my native strand,
I've wandered many miles at sea,
And many miles on land;
I've seen fair realms of the earth,
By rude commotion torn,
Which taught me how to prize the worth
Of that where I was born.
"In other countries when I heard
The language of my own,
How fondly each familiar word
Awoke an answering tone!
But when our woodland songs were sung
Upon a foreign mart,
The vows that faltered on the tongue
With rapture thrilled the heart.
"My native land! I turn to you
With blessing and with prayer,
Where man is brave, and woman true
And free as mountain air.
Long may our flag in triumph wave,
Against the world combined,
And friends a welcome--foes a grave,
Within our borders find."
In this song we see the spirit in which was written _The Flag of our
Union_. Ten years before the War of the Rebellion, when the mutterings
of the coming storm were already in the air, this poet and traveler, who
had found his country's flag such an inspiration when roving in foreign
lands, poured out his heart in this hymn to the Flag. It was set to
music by William Vincent Wallace, and was very popular in war times. It
is worthy of popularity so long as the Flag of the Union shall wave.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _JOHN BROWN_]
_JOHN BROWN'S BODY._
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave!
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave!
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave!
His soul is marching on.
Glory, glory hallelujah!
Glory, glory hallelujah!
Glory, glory hallelujah!
His soul is marching on.
The stars of heaven are looking kindly down!
The stars of heaven are looking kindly down!
The stars of heaven are looking kindly down!
On the grave of old John Brown!
He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord!
He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord!
He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord!
His soul is marching on.
John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back!
John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back!
John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back!
His soul is marching on.
--_Charles S. Hall._
No prophet is ever able to foretell what will catch the popular ear. The
original John Brown song, written by Miss Edna Dean Proctor, is
certainly far more coherent and intelligible than the lines which have
formed the marching song for over a million men, and have held their own
through a generation. It is well worth repeating here:--
"John Brown died on the scaffold for the slave;
Dark was the hour when we dug his hallowed grave;
Now God avenges the life he gladly gave,
Freedom reigns to-day!
Glory, glory hallelujah,
Glory, glory hallelujah,
Glory, glory hallelujah.
Freedom reigns to-day!
"John Brown sowed and the harvesters are we;
Honor to him who has made the bondsman free;
Loved evermore shall our noble ruler be,
Freedom reigns to-day!
"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave;
Bright o'er the sod let the starry banner wave;
Lo! for the million he periled all to save,
Freedom reigns to-day!
"John Brown's soul through the world is marching on;
Hail to the hour when oppression shall be gone;
All men will sing in the better day's dawn,
Freedom reigns to-day!
"John Brown dwells where the battle's strife is o'er;
Hate cannot harm him, nor sorrow stir him more;
Earth will remember the martyrdom he bore,
Freedom reigns to-day!
"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave;
John Brown lives in the triumph of the brave;
John Brown's soul not a higher joy can crave,
Freedom reigns to-day!"
The more popular, if not more worthy, song of John Brown's Body seems to
have been of Massachusetts origin at the commencement of the Civil War.
It was first sung in 1861. When the Massachusetts Volunteers, commanded
by Colonel Fletcher Webster, a son of the famous Daniel Webster, were
camped on one of the islands in Boston Harbor, some of the soldiers
amused themselves by adapting the words,--
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
His soul is marching on.
Glory, glory hallelujah,
His soul is marching on,"
to a certain air. Mr. Charles Sprague Hall, who is the author of the
lines as finally sung, says that when the soldiers first began to sing
it the first verse was the only one known. He wrote the other verses,
but did not know where the first one came from.
The way was opened for this song through a campaign song heard from the
lips of the Douglas, and the Bell, and the Everett Campaign Clubs, who,
in order to spite Governor John A. Andrew, the famous war governor of
Massachusetts, sang the following lines as they were marching through
the streets of Boston, with their torches in hand,--
"Tell John Andrew,
Tell John Andrew,
Tell John Andrew
John Brown's dead.
Salt won't save him,
John Brown's dead."
These lines are supposed to have been an imitation of the doggerel,--
"Tell Aunt Rhody,
Tell Aunt Rhody,
Tell Aunt Rhody
The old goose is dead.
Salt won't save him,
The old goose is dead."
Great stress having been laid by the opponents of Governor Andrew upon
the fact that John Brown was dead, the authors of the song spoken of
took good care to assert that, while
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
His soul is marching on."
[Illustration: _HARPER'S FERRY_]
This was the answer of those that sympathized with John Brown, a song
which they flung at those who seemed to take delight in the fact that he
was dead.
Thane Miller, of Cincinnati, heard the melody, which is perhaps the most
popular martial melody in America, in a colored Presbyterian church in
Charleston, South Carolina, about 1859, and soon after introduced it at
a convention of the Young Men's Christian Association in Albany, New
York, with the words,--
"Say, brothers will you meet us,
Say, brothers will you meet us,
Say, brothers will you meet us,
On Canaan's happy shore?
By the grace of God we'll meet you,
By the grace of God we'll meet you,
By the grace of God we'll meet you,
Where parting is no more."
Professor James E. Greenleaf, organist of the Harvard Church in
Charlestown, found the music in the archives of that church, and fitted
it to the first stanza of the present song. It has since been claimed
that the Millerites, in 1843, used the same tune to a hymn, one verse of
which is as follows,--
"We'll see the angels coming
Through the old churchyards,
Shouting through the air
Glory, glory hallelujah!"
Whatever may have been the origin of the melody, when fitted by
Greenleaf to the first stanza of _John Brown's Body_, it became so great
a favorite with the Glee Club of the Boston Light Infantry that they
asked Mr. Hall to write the additional stanzas.
As has been the case with popular tunes in every age, verses have been
often added to it to meet the occasion. While the words are not of a
classical order, the air is of that popular kind which strikes the heart
of the average man. During the Civil War it served to cheer and inspire
the Union soldiers in their camps and on the march, and was sung at home
at every popular gathering in town or country. It seemed to be just what
the soldiers needed at the time, and served its purpose far better than
would choicer words or more artistic music. No song during all the war
fired the popular heart as did _John Brown's Body_. It crossed the sea
and became the popular street song in London. The _Pall Mall Gazette_ of
October 14, 1865, said: "The street boys of London have decided in favor
of _John Brown's Body_, against _My Maryland_, and _The Bonnie Blue
Flag_. The somewhat lugubrious refrain has excited their admiration to a
wonderful degree, and threatens to extinguish that hard-worked,
exquisite effort of modern minstrelsy, _Slap Bang_."
After the original song had gained world-wide notoriety, the following
words were written by Henry Howard Brownell, who died at Hartford,
Connecticut, October 31, 1872, aged fifty-two. Mr. Brownell entitled his
poem, "Words that can be sung to the _Hallelujah Chorus_," and says: "If
people will sing about Old John Brown, there is no reason why they
shouldn't have words with a little meaning and rhythm in them."
"Old John Brown lies a-mouldering in the grave,
Old John Brown lies slumbering in his grave--
But John Brown's soul is marching with the brave,
His soul is marching on.
Glory, glory hallelujah!
Glory, glory hallelujah!
Glory, glory hallelujah!
His soul is marching on.
"He has gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
He is sworn as a private in the ranks of the Lord--
He shall stand at Armageddon, with his brave old sword,
When Heaven is marching on.
"He shall file in front where the lines of battle form--
He shall face the front where the squares of battle form--
Time with the column and charge with the storm,
Where men are marching on.
"Ah, foul tyrants! do you hear him where he comes?
Ah, black traitors! do you know him as he comes?
In thunder of the cannon and roll of the drums,
As we go marching on.
"Men may die, and moulder in the dust--
Men may die, and arise again from dust,
Shoulder to shoulder, in the ranks of the just,
When Heaven is marching on."
But Mr. Brownell has shared the same fate with Miss Proctor, and his
song and hers are only curiosities to-day, which show how arbitrary the
popular will is when once the heart or the imagination is really
captured. Mr. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., writing to Mr. James T. Fields,
the famous Boston litterateur, said: "It would have been past belief had
we been told that the almost undistinguishable name of John Brown should
be whispered among four millions of slaves, and sung wherever the
English language is spoken, and incorporated into an anthem to whose
solemn cadences men should march to battle by the tens of thousands."
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _DANIEL DECATUR EMMETT_]
_DIXIE._
I wish I was in de land ob cotton,
Old times dar am not forgotten,
Look away! Look away! Look away!
In Dixie Land where I was born in,
Early on a frosty mornin',
Look away! Look away! Look away!
Den I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land, I'll take my stand,
To lib and die in Dixie,
Away! Away!
Away down south in Dixie.
Old Missus marry "Will-de-weaber,"
Willium was a gay deceaber;
Look away! Look away! Look away!
But when he put his arm around 'er,
He smiled as fierce as a forty pounder,
Look away! Look away! Look away!
His face was as sharp as a butcher's cleaber,
But dat did not seem to greab 'er;
Look away! Look away! Look away!
Old Missus acted de foolish part,
And died for a man dat broke her heart.
Look away! Look away! Look away!
Now here's a health to de next old Missus,
And all de gals dat want to kiss us;
Look away! Look away! Look away!
But if you want to drive 'way sorrow,
Come and hear dis song tomorrow,
Look away! Look away! Look away!
Dar's buckwheat cakes an' Injen batter,
Makes you fat or a little fatter;
Look away! Look away! Look away!
Den hoe it down and scratch your grabble,
To Dixie's Land I'm bound to trabble,
Look away! Look away! Look away!
--_Dan Emmett._
[Illustration: _PICKING COTTON_]
Dan Emmett, who wrote the original _Dixie_, which has been paraphrased
and changed and adapted nearly as frequently as _Yankee Doodle_ was born
at Mount Vernon, Ohio, in 1815. He came from a family all of whose
members had a local reputation, still traditional in that part of the
country, as musicians. In his own case this talent, if given a fair
chance for development, would have amounted to genius. He began life as
a printer, but soon abandoned his trade to join the band of musicians
connected with a circus company. He was not long in discovering that he
could compose songs of the kind in use by clowns; one of the most
popular of these was _Old Dan Tucker_. Its success was so great
that Emmett followed it with many others. They were all negro melodies,
and many of them won great popularity. Finally he took to negro
impersonations, singing his own songs in the ring, while he accompanied
himself on the banjo. He made a specialty of old men, and he declares
with pride that when he had blackened his face, and donned his wig of
kinky white hair, he was "the best old negro that ever lived." He became
such a favorite with the patrons of the circus in the South and West,
that at last--partly by chance, and partly through intention--he became
a full-fledged actor. This was in 1842, at the old Chatham Theater in
New York City, when with two companions he gave a mixed performance,
made up largely of songs and dances typical of slave life and character.
The little troupe was billed as "The Virginia Minstrels," and their
popularity with the public was instantaneous.
This was the beginning of negro minstrelsy, which was destined to have
such a wide popularity in America. From New York the pioneer company
went to Boston, and later on sailed for England, leaving the
newly-discovered field to the host of imitators who were rapidly
dividing their success with them. Emmett had great success in the
British Isles, and remained abroad for several years. When he returned
to New York, he joined the Dan Bryant Minstrel Company, which then held
sway in Bryant's Theater on lower Broadway, which was at that time one
of the most popular resorts in New York City. Emmett was engaged to
write songs and walk-arounds and take part in the nightly performances.
It was while he was with Bryant that _Dixie_ was composed.
Emmett is still living and resides at Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he hopes
to end his days. The old man is a picturesque figure on the streets. In
his prime he was one of the mid-century dandies of New York City, but
now, with calm indifference to the conventional, he usually carries a
long staff and wears his coat fastened in at the waist by a bit of rope.
His home is a little cottage on the edge of town, where he lives
entirely alone. On almost any warm afternoon he can be found seated
before his door reading, but he is ready enough to talk with the chance
visitor whose curiosity to meet the composer of one of the National
Songs of America, has brought him thither. A newspaper man who recently
went to talk with the old minstrel found him seated in the shade by his
house with a book open before him. As he went up the path, he said, for
he had some doubt in his own mind,--
"Are you Dan Emmett, who wrote _Dixie_?"
"Well, I have heard of the fellow; sit down," and Emmett motioned to the
steps.
"Won't you tell me how the song was written?"
"Like most everything else I ever did," said Emmett, "it was written
because it had to be done. One Saturday night, in 1859, as I was leaving
Bryant's Theater, where I was playing, Bryant called after me, 'I want a
walk-'round for Monday, Dan.'
"The next day it rained and I stayed indoors. At first when I went at
the song I couldn't get anything. But a line,
'I wish I was in Dixie,'
kept repeating itself in my mind, and I finally took it for my start.
The rest wasn't long in coming. And that's the story of how _Dixie_ was
written.
"It made a hit at once, and before the end of the week everybody in New
York was whistling it. Then the South took it up and claimed it for its
own. I sold the copyright for five hundred dollars, which was all I ever
made from it. I'll show you my first copy."
He went into the house and returned in a moment with a yellow,
worn-looking manuscript in his hand.
"That's _Dixie_," he said, holding it up for inspection. "I am going to
give it to some historical society in the South, one of these days, for
though I was born here in Ohio, I count myself a Southerner, as my
father was a Virginian."
_Dixie Land_ was without question the most famous of all the Southern
war songs. But it was the tune, as in the case of _Yankee Doodle_, and
not the words that gave it its great power to fire the heart. It is
claimed that Emmett appropriated the tune from an old negro air, which
is quite probable.
The only poem set to the famous air of _Dixie_ which has any literary
merit is one that was written by General Albert Pike. Some one has said
that it is worthy of notice that the finest Puritan lyric we have was
written by an Englishwoman, Mrs. Felicia Hemans, and the most popular
Southern war song was written by a Yankee, a native of Massachusetts.
Albert Pike was born in Boston, December 29, 1809, but most of his
boyhood was spent in Newburyport. He became a teacher, but in 1831
visited what was then the wild region of the Southwest with a party of
trappers. He afterward edited a paper at Little Rock, and studied law.
He served in the Mexican War with distinction, and on the breaking out
of the Rebellion enlisted, on the Confederate side, a force of Cherokee
Indians, whom he led at the battle of Pea Ridge. After the war he edited
the Memphis _Appeal_ till 1868, when he settled in Washington as a
lawyer. He has written a number of fine poems, and retired from the
profession of law in 1880, to devote himself to literature and
Freemasonry. Mr. Pike's version of Dixie is as follows,--
[Illustration: _ALBERT PIKE_]
"Southrons, hear your Country call you!
Up, lest worse than death befall you!
To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!
Lo! all the beacon fires are lighted--
Let all hearts be now united!
To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Dixie's land we take our stand,
And live or die for Dixie!
To arms! To arms!
And conquer peace for Dixie!
To arms! To arms!
And conquer peace for Dixie!
"Hear the Northern thunders mutter!
Northern flags in South winds flutter!
To arms!
Send them back your fierce defiance!
Stamp upon the accursed alliance!
To arms!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
"Fear no danger! Shun no labor!
Lift up rifle, pike, and sabre!
To arms!
Shoulder pressing close to shoulder,
Let the odds make each heart bolder!
To arms!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
"How the South's great heart rejoices,
At your cannons' ringing voices!
To arms!
For faith betrayed, and pledges broken,
Wrongs inflicted, insults spoken,
To arms!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
"Strong as lions, swift as eagles,
Back to their kennels hunt these beagles!
To arms!
Cut the unequal bonds asunder!
Let them hence each other plunder!
To arms!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
"Swear upon your country's altar
Never to submit or falter!
To arms!
Till the spoilers are defeated,
Till the Lord's work is completed.
To arms!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
"Halt not till our Federation
Secures from earth's powers its station!
To arms!
Then at peace, and crowned with glory,
Hear your children tell the story!
To arms!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
"If the loved ones weep in sadness,
Victory soon will bring them gladness.
To arms!
Exultant pride soon vanish sorrow;
Smiles chase tears away tomorrow.
To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!
Advance the flag of Dixie!
Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Dixie's land we take our stand,
And live or die for Dixie!
To arms! To arms!
And conquer peace for Dixie!
To arms! To arms!
And conquer peace for Dixie!"
Since the war _Dixie_ has been as favorite a tune with bands of music
throughout the North as has _Yankee Doodle_. Abraham Lincoln set the
example for this. A war correspondent recalls an incident which occurred
only a night or two before Mr. Lincoln was assassinated. The President
had returned from Richmond, and a crowd called with a band to tender
congratulations and a serenade. The great man who was so soon to be the
victim of the assassin's bullet appeared in response to calls and
thanked his audience for the compliment. Several members of his Cabinet
surrounded him, and it was a very interesting and dramatic occasion.
Just as he was closing his brief remarks, Mr. Lincoln said: "I see you
have a band with you. I should like to hear it play _Dixie_. I have
consulted the Attorney-General, who is here by my side, and he is of the
opinion that Dixie belongs to us. Now play it." The band struck up the
old tune, and played it heartily. As the strains of the music rang out
upon the air, cheer after cheer went up from the throats of the hundreds
of happy men who had called to congratulate Mr. Lincoln upon the return
of peace. It was that great soul's olive branch which he held out to the
South.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _ABRAHAM LINCOLN_]
_THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM._
Yes, we'll rally round the flag, boys, we'll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom,
We'll rally from the hillside, we'll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom!
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!
We are springing to the call of our brothers gone before,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;
And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen more,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom!
We will welcome to our numbers the loyal, true, and brave,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;
And although they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom!
So we're springing to the call from the East and from the West,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom;
And we'll hurl the rebel crew from the land we love the best,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom!
--_George F. Root._
This inspiring rallying song was written by George F. Root, to whom we
are indebted for so many songs of camp and field. Mr. Root also composed
the music. Perhaps no hymn of battle in America has been sung under so
many interesting circumstances as this. It was written in 1861, on
President Lincoln's second call for troops, and was first sung at a
popular meeting in Chicago and next at a great mass meeting in Union
Square, New York, where those famous singers, the Hutchinson Family,
sounded it forth like a trump of jubilee to the ears of thousands of
loyal listeners.
It was always a great favorite with the soldiers. Dr. Jesse Bowman
Young, of St. Louis, the author of _What a Boy Saw in the Army_, relates
a very affecting and pathetic incident which occurred while a portion of
the Army of the Potomac was marching across Maryland. A young officer
and his company were in the lead, and just behind them came one of the
regimental bands, while ahead of them rode General Humphreys and his
staff. As the division marched along, they passed by a country
schoolhouse in a little grove at a crossroad. The teacher, hearing the
music of the band at a distance, and expecting the arrival of the
troops, had dismissed the school to give them a sight of the soldiers.
Before the troops came in sight the boys and girls had gathered bunches
of wild flowers, platted garlands of leaves, and secured several tiny
flags, and as General Humphreys rode up in front of the schoolhouse, a
little girl came forth and presented him with a bouquet, which he
acknowledged with gracious courtesy. Then the group of assembled pupils
began to sing, as they waved their flags and garlands in the air. That
song made a tumult in every soldier's heart. Many strong men wept as
they looked on the scene and thought of their own loved ones far away in
their Northern homes, and were inspired with newborn courage and
patriotism by the sight and the song. This is the chorus which rang
forth that day from the country schoolhouse, and which soon afterward
echoed through the battle in many a soldier's ear and heart, miles away,
on the bloody field of Gettysburg:--
"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 first company that passed responded to their captain with a will as
he shouted, "Boys, give them three cheers and a tiger!" and the example
was imitated by the regiments that followed; so that amid the singing of
the children and the cheers of the soldiers, and the beating of the
drums, the occasion was made memorable to all concerned.
Richard Wentworth Browne relates that a day or two after Lee's surrender
in April, 1865, he visited Richmond, in company with some other Union
officers. After a day of sight-seeing, the party adjourned to Mr.
Browne's rooms for dinner. After dinner one of the officers who played
well opened the piano, saying, "Boys, we have our old quartette here,
let's have a song." As the house opposite was occupied by paroled
Confederate officers, no patriotic songs were sung. Soon the lady of the
house handed Mr. Browne this note: "Compliments of General ---- and
staff. Will the gentlemen kindly allow us to come over and hear them
sing?" Consent was readily given and they came. As the General entered
the room, the Union officers recognized instantly the face and figure of
an officer who had stood very high in the Confederacy. After
introductions, and the usual interchange of civilities, the quartette
sang for them glees and college songs, until at last the General said,
"Excuse me, gentlemen, you sing delightfully, but what we want to hear
is your army songs." Then they gave them the army songs with
unction: _The Battle Hymn of the Republic_; _John Brown's Body_; _We're
coming, Father Abraham_; _Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching_;
and so on through the whole catalogue to the _Star-Spangled Banner_,--to
which the Confederate feet beat time as if they had never stepped to any
but the music of the Union,--and closed their concert with Root's
inspiring _Battle Cry of Freedom_.
[Illustration: _FORT SUMTER_]
When the applause had subsided, a tall, fine-looking young fellow in a
major's uniform exclaimed, "Gentlemen, if we'd had your songs we'd have
licked you out of your boots! Who couldn't have marched or fought with
such songs? while we had nothing, absolutely nothing, except a bastard
Marseillaise, _The Bonny Blue Flag_, and _Dixie_, which were nothing but
jigs. _Maryland, my Maryland_ was a splendid song, but the tune, old
_Lauriger Horatius_, was about as inspiring as the Dead March in _Saul_,
while every one of these Yankee songs is full of marching and fighting
spirit."
Then turning to the General he said, "I shall never forget the first
time I heard that chorus, 'Rally round the Flag.' It was a nasty night
during the Seven Days' fight, and if I remember rightly, it was raining.
I was on picket, when just before 'taps' some fellow on the other side
struck up _The Battle Cry of Freedom_ and others joined in the chorus
until it seemed to me that the whole Yankee army was singing. A
comrade who was with me sang out, 'Good heavens, Cap, what are those
fellows made of, anyway? Here we've licked them six days running, and
now, on the eve of the seventh, they're singing "Rally round the Flag?"'
I am not naturally superstitious, but I tell you that song sounded to me
like the knell of doom; my heart went down into my boots; and though
I've tried to do my duty, it has been an uphill fight with me ever since
that night."
Perhaps the most romantic and inspiring occasion on which _The Battle
Cry of Freedom_ was ever sung was at the raising of the flag over Fort
Sumter on the 14th of April, 1865, that being the fourth anniversary of
the day when Major Anderson had evacuated the fort after his brave
defense. A large number of citizens went from New York in excursion
steamers, to assist in the celebration. Colonel Stewart L. Woodford,
recently the United States minister to Spain, was master of ceremonies.
The oration was delivered by the eloquent Henry Ward Beecher, but the
supreme moment of interest came when Major-General Anderson, who had
added General to the Major in the past four years, after a touching and
tender address, received from Sergeant Hart a bag containing the
precious old flag which had waved in the breeze through those days of
fierce bombardment, the din of which had been heard around the world.
The flag had been saved for such a time as this, and now, by order of
Abraham Lincoln, it was brought back to wave again over Fort Sumter. It
was attached to the halyards, and General Anderson hoisted it to the
head of the flagstaff amid loud huzzas. One can imagine the inspiration
of the occasion, as William B. Bradbury led the singing of _The Battle
Cry of Freedom_. How the tears ran down the cheeks, and hearts
overflowed with thanksgiving as they shouted the chorus underneath the
folds of the very flag that had received the first baptism of fire at
the beginning of the Rebellion:--
"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!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _HENRY CLAY WORK_]
_SONG OF A THOUSAND YEARS._
Lift up your eyes, desponding freemen!
Fling to the winds your needless fears!
He who unfurl'd your beauteous banner,
Says it shall wave a thousand years!
"A thousand years!" my own Columbia,
'Tis the glad day so long foretold!
'Tis the glad morn whose early twilight,
Washington saw in times of old.
What if the clouds, one little moment,
Hide the blue sky where morn appears--
When the bright sun, that tints them crimson,
Rises to shine a thousand years?
Tell the great world these blessed tidings!
Yes, and be sure the bondman hears;
Tell the oppressed of every nation,
Jubilee lasts a thousand years!
Envious foes, beyond the ocean!
Little we heed your threat'ning sneers;
Little will they--our children's children--
When you are gone a thousand years.
Rebels at home! go hide your faces--
Weep for your crimes with bitter tears;
You could not bind the blessed daylight,
Though you should strive a thousand years.
Back to your dens, ye secret traitors!
Down to your own degraded spheres!
Ere the first blaze of dazzling sunshine,
Shortens your lives a thousand years.
Haste thee along, thou glorious noonday!
Oh, for the eyes of ancient seers!
Oh, for the faith of him who reckons
Each of his days a thousand years!
--_Henry Clay Work._
Henry Clay Work was born in Middletown, Connecticut, October 1, 1832.
The family came originally from Scotland, and the name is thought to
have come from a castle, "Auld Wark, upon the Tweed," famed in the
border wars in the times made immortal by Sir Walter Scott. He inherited
his love of liberty and hatred of slavery from his father, who suffered
much for conscience' sake. While quite young, his family moved to
Illinois, near Quincy, and he passed his boyhood in the most abject
poverty, his father having been taken from home and imprisoned because
of his strong anti-slavery views and active work in the struggles of
those enthusiastic and devoted reformers. In 1845, Henry's father was
pardoned on condition that he would leave the State of Illinois. The
family then returned to Connecticut. After a few months' attendance at
school in Middletown, our future song writer was apprenticed to Elisha
Geer, of Hartford, to learn the printer's trade. He learned to write
over the printer's case in much the same way as did Benjamin Franklin.
He never had any music lessons except a short term of instruction in a
church singing school. The poetic temperament, and his musical gifts as
well, were his inheritance. He began writing very early, and many of his
unambitious little poems found their way into the newspapers during his
apprenticeship.
Work's first song was written in Hartford and entitled, _We're coming,
Sister Mary_. He sold this song to George Christie, of Christie's
minstrels, and it made a decided hit. In 1855 he removed to Chicago,
where he continued his trade as a printer. The following year he married
Miss Sarah Parker, of Hubbardston, Massachusetts, and settled at Hyde
Park. In 1860 he wrote _Lost on the "Lady Elgin,"_ a song commemorating
the terrible disaster to a Lake Michigan steamer, which became widely
known.
_Kingdom Coming_ was Work's first war song, and was written in 1861. Now
that it has been so successful, it seems strange that he should have had
trouble to find a publisher for it; yet such was the case. But its
success was immediate as soon as published. It is perhaps the most
popular of all the darkey songs which deal directly with the question
of the freedom of the slaves. It set the whole world laughing, but there
was about it a vein of political wisdom as well as of poetic justice
that commended it to strong men. The music is full of life and is as
popular as the words. It became the song of the newsboys of the home
towns and cities as well as of the soldiers in the camp and on the
march. It portrays the practical situation on the Southern plantation as
perhaps no other poem brought out by the war:--
"Say, darkies, hab you seen de massa,
Wid de muffstash on his face,
Go long de road some time dis mornin',
Like he gwine to leab de place?
He seen a smoke way up de ribber,
Whar de Linkum gunboats lay;
He took his hat, an' lef' bery sudden,
An' I spec he's run away!
De massa run? ha, ha!
De darkey stay? ho, ho!
It mus' be now de kingdom comin',
And de year ob jubilo!
"He's six feet one way, two foot tudder,
An' he weigh tree hundred poun',
His coat's so big he couldn't pay de tailor,
An' it won't go half way roun'.
He drill so much dey call him cap'an,
An' he get so drefful tann'd,
[Illustration: _THE WHITE HOUSE_]
I spec he try an' fool dem Yankees
For to t'ink he's contraband.
"De darkies feel so lonesome
Libing in de log house on de lawn,
Dey moved dar tings to massa's parlor,
For to keep it while he gone.
Dar's wine and cider in de kitchen,
An' de darkies dey'll hab some;
I spose dey'll all be cornfiscated,
When de Linkum sojers come.
"De oberseer he make us trubbel,
An' he dribe us round a spell;
We lock him up in de smoke-house cellar,
Wid de key trown in de well.
De whip is lost, de handcuff's broken,
But de massa'll hab his pay;
He's ole enough, big enough, ought to known better,
Den to went an' run away."
Another most popular slave song which had a tremendous sale was entitled
_Wake Nicodemus_, the first verse of which is,--
"Nicodemus, the slave, was of African birth,
And was bought for a bagful of gold;
He was reckon'd as part of the salt of the earth,
But he died years ago, very old.
'Twas his last sad request--so we laid him away
In the trunk of an old hollow tree.
'Wake me up!' was his charge, 'at the first break of day--
Wake me up for the great jubilee!'
The Good Time Coming is almost here!
It was long, long, long on the way!
Now run and tell Elijah to hurry up Pomp,
And meet us at the gumtree down in the swamp,
To wake Nicodemus to-day."
While _Marching through Georgia_ is, without doubt, Mr. Work's most
renowned war song, his _Song of a Thousand Years_ has about it a rise
and swell, and a sublimity both in expression and melody, that surpasses
anything else that he has written. The chorus is peculiarly fine both in
words and music.
Work's songs brought him a considerable fortune. After the close of the
war he made an extended tour through Europe, and while on the sea wrote
a song which became very famous, entitled _The Ship that Never
Returned_. During the later years of his life he wrote _Come Home,
Father_, and _King Bibbler's Army_--both famous temperance songs.
After his return from Europe, Work invested his fortune in a
fruit-growing enterprise in Vineland, New Jersey. He was also a somewhat
remarkable inventor, and a patented knitting machine, a walking doll,
and a rotary engine are among his numerous achievements. These years
were saddened by financial and domestic misfortunes. His wife became
insane, and died in an asylum in 1883. He survived her only a year,
dying suddenly of heart disease on June 8, 1884, at Hartford,
Connecticut. His ashes rest in Spring Grove Cemetery in that city, and
on Decoration Day the Grand Army of the Republic never fail to strew
flowers on the grave of the singer whose words and melodies led many an
army to deeds of heroism. May a grateful people keep his memory green,
and cause his grave to blossom for "A Thousand Years!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _JOHN WALLACE HUTCHINSON_]
_TENTING ON THE OLD CAMP GROUND._
We're tenting to-night on the old camp ground;
Give us a song to cheer
Our weary hearts, a song of home,
And friends we love so dear.
Many are the hearts that are weary to-night,
Wishing for the war to cease,
Many are the hearts, looking for the right,
To see the dawn of peace.
Tenting to-night, tenting to-night,
Tenting on the old camp ground.
We've been tenting to-night on the old camp ground,
Thinking of days gone by,
Of the loved ones at home, that gave us the hand,
And the tear that said "Good-bye!"
We are tired of war on the old camp ground,
Many are dead and gone,
Of the brave and true who've left their homes
Others been wounded long.
We've been fighting to-day on the old camp ground,
Many are lying near;
Some are dead, and some are dying,
Many are in tears.
--_Walter Kittredge._
Walter Kittredge was born in Merrimac, New Hampshire, October 8, 1832.
His father was a farmer, and though New Hampshire farms are proverbial
for their stony hillsides, they were fertile for the production of large
families in those days, and Walter was the tenth of eleven children. His
education was received at the village school. Like most other writers of
war songs, Kittredge had an ear for music from the very first. All of
his knowledge of music, however, he picked up for himself, as he never
had an opportunity of attending music schools, or being under a teacher.
He writes: "My father bought one of the first seraphines [a species of
melodeon] made in Concord, New Hampshire, and well do I remember when
the man came to put it up. To hear him play a simple melody was a rich
treat, and this event was an important epoch in my child life."
[Illustration: _MOCCASIN BEND
(From Lookout Mountain)_]
_Tenting on the Old Camp Ground_, more than any other of our American
war songs, had in it the heart experience of the man who wrote it. In
1863 Kittredge was drafted into the army. That night he went to bed the
prey of many conflicting emotions. He was loyal to the heart's core, but
was full of grief at the thought of leaving his home, and his rather
poetic and timid nature revolted against war. In the middle of the night
he awoke from a troubled sleep with the burden of dread still on his
mind. In the solemnity and stillness of the night the sad and
pathetic fancies of the battle field filled his thought. He reflected on
how many of the dear boys had already gone over to the unseen shore,
killed in battle, or dead from disease in the camps. He thought of the
unknown graves, of the sorrowful homes; of the weary waiting for the end
of the cruel strife, of the trials and hardships of the tented field
where the brave soldier boys waited for the coming battle, which might
be their last. Suddenly these reflections began to take form in his
mind. He arose and began to write. The first verse reveals his purpose
not only to give cheer to others, but to comfort his own heart:--
"We're tenting to-night on the old camp ground;
Give us a song to cheer
Our weary hearts, a song of home!
And friends we loved so dear."
That verse was like a prayer to God for comfort and the prayer was heard
and answered.
Being a musician, a tune for the song easily came to Kittredge's mind,
and after copying both words and music he went at once to Lynn,
Massachusetts, to visit his friend, Asa Hutchinson, one of the famous
Hutchinson family, who then lived at Bird's Nest Cottage, at High Rock.
After they had looked it over together, they called in John Hutchinson,
who still lives, the "last of the Hutchinsons," to sing the solo. Asa
Hutchinson sang the bass, and the children joined in the chorus.
Kittredge at once made a contract with Asa Hutchinson to properly
arrange and publish the song for one-half the profits.
The Hutchinson family were just then giving a series of torchlight
concerts on the crest of old High Rock, with the tickets at the
exceedingly popular price of five cents. The people from all the towns
about turned out _en masse_. They had half a dozen or more ticket
sellers and takers stationed at the various approaches to the rock.
During the day they would wind balls of old cloth and soak them in oil.
These, placed in pans on the top of posts at intervals, would burn quite
steadily for an hour or more, and boys stood ready to replace them when
they burned out. The audience gathered in thousands every night during
this remarkable series of concerts, and on the very night of the day
Kittredge had brought his new hymn, _Tenting on the Old Camp Ground_ was
sung for the first time from the crest of High Rock.
Like so many other afterward famous songs, it was hard to find a
publisher at first, but the immense popularity which sprang up from the
singing of the hymn about Boston soon led a Boston publisher to hire
some one to write another song with a similar title, and a few weeks
later the veteran music publisher, Ditson, brought out the original. Its
sale reached many hundreds of thousands of copies during the war, and
since then it has retained its popularity perhaps as completely as any
of our war lyrics. It has been specially popular at reunions of
soldiers, and every Grand Army assembly calls for it. Many a time I have
seen the old veteran wiping away the tears as he listened to the singing
of the second verse:--
"We've been tenting to-night on the old camp ground,
Thinking of days gone by,
Of the loved ones at home, that gave us the hand,
And the tear that said 'Good-bye.'"
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _JULIA WARD HOWE_]
_THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC._
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 fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I have read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
--_Julia Ward Howe._
This is, perhaps, the most elevated and lofty strain of American
patriotism. Julia Ward Howe is a worthy author of such a hymn. She was
the daughter of Samuel Ward, a solid New York banker of his time. Her
mother, Julia Rush Ward, was herself a poet of good ability. Mrs. Howe
received a very fine education, and, in addition to ordinary college
culture, speaks fluently Italian, French, and Greek. In her girlhood she
was a devout student of Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, Comte, and Fichte. Her
literary work had given her considerable prominence before her marriage
to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, of Boston, just then famous for his
self-sacrificing services in association with Lord Byron in behalf of
the liberty of the Greeks, and henceforth to become forever immortal for
his life-long devotion to the cause of the blind. America never produced
a more daring and benevolent man than Doctor Howe.
The _Battle Hymn of the Republic_ had its birth-throes amid the storms
of war. In December, 1861, Mrs. Howe, in company with her husband,
Governor and Mrs. John A. Andrew, Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, and
other friends, made a journey to Washington. They arrived in the night.
As their train sped on through the darkness, they saw in vivid contrast
the camp fires of the pickets set to guard the line of the railroad. The
troops lay encamped around the Capital City, their lines extending to a
considerable distance. At the hotel where the Boston party were
entertained, officers and their orderlies were conspicuous, and army
ambulances were constantly arriving and departing. The gallop of
horsemen, the tramp of foot soldiers, the noise of drum, fife, and bugle
were heard continually. The two great powers were holding each other in
check, and the very air seemed tense with expectancy. The one absorbing
thought in Washington was the army, and the time of the visitors was
generally employed in visits to the camps and hospitals.
One day during this visit a party which included Doctor and Mrs. Howe
and Doctor Clarke attended a review of the Union troops at a distance of
several miles from the city. The maneuvers were interrupted by a sudden
attack of the enemy, and instead of the spectacle promised them, they
saw some reinforcements of cavalry gallop hastily to the aid of a small
force of Federal troops which had been surprised and surrounded. They
returned to the city as soon as possible, but their progress was much
impeded by marching troops who nearly filled the highway. As they had to
drive very slowly, in order to beguile the time they began to sing army
songs, among which the John Brown song soon came to mind. This caught
the ear of the soldiers and they joined in the inspiring chorus, and
made it ring and ring again. Mrs. Howe was greatly impressed by the long
lines of soldiers and the devotion and enthusiasm which they evinced, as
they sung while they marched, _John Brown's Body_. James Freeman Clarke,
seeing Mrs. Howe's deep emotion which was mirrored in her intense face,
said:
"You ought to write some new words to go with that tune."
"I will," she earnestly replied.
[Illustration: _FANEUIL HALL_]
She went back to Washington, went to bed, and finally fell asleep. She
awoke in the night to find her now famous hymn beginning to form itself
in her brain. As she lay still in the dark room, line after line
and verse after verse shaped themselves. When she had thought out the
last of these, she felt that she dared not go to sleep again lest they
should be effaced by a morning nap. She sprang out of bed and groped
about in the dim December twilight to find a bit of paper and the stump
of a pencil with which she had been writing the evening before. Having
found these articles, and having long been accustomed to jot down stray
thoughts with scarcely any light in a room made dark for the repose of
her infant children, she very soon completed her writing, went back to
bed, and fell fast asleep.
What sublime and splendid words she had written! There is in them the
spirit of the old prophets. Nothing could be grander than the first
line:--
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
In the second verse one sees through her eyes the vivid picture she had
witnessed in her afternoon's visit to the army:--
"I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on."
In the third and fourth verses there is a triumphant note of daring
faith and prophecy that was wonderfully contagious, and millions of men
and women took heart again as they read or sang and caught its
optimistic note:--
"He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on."
On returning to Boston, Mrs. Howe carried her hymn to James T. Fields,
at that time the editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, and it was first
published in that magazine. The title, _The Battle Hymn of the
Republic_, was the work of Mr. Fields.
Strange to say, when it first appeared the song aroused no special
attention. Though it was destined to have such world-wide appreciation,
it won its first victory in Libby Prison. Nearly a year after its
publication, a copy of a newspaper containing it was smuggled into the
prison, where many hundreds of Northern officers and soldiers were
confined, among them being the brilliant Chaplain, now Bishop, Charles
C. McCabe. The Chaplain could sing anything and make music out of it,
but he seized on this splendid battle hymn with enthusiastic delight.
It makes the blood in one's veins boil again with patriotic fervor to
hear him tell how the tears rained down strong men's cheeks as they sang
in the Southern prison, far away from home and friends, those wonderful
closing lines:--
"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on."
It was Chaplain McCabe who had the privilege and honor of calling public
attention to the song after his release. He came to Washington and in
his lecture (that has come to be almost as famous as the battle hymn) on
"The Bright Side of Life in Libby Prison," he described the singing of
the hymn by himself and his companions in that dismal place of
confinement. People now began to ask who had written the hymn, and the
author's name was easily established by a reference to the magazine.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _GEORGE FREDERICK ROOT_]
_JUST BEFORE THE BATTLE, MOTHER._
Just before the battle, mother,
I am thinking most of you,
While upon the field we're watching,
With the enemy in view--
Comrades brave are round me lying,
Fill'd with tho't of home and God;
For well they know that on the morrow,
Some will sleep beneath the sod.
Farewell, mother, you may never
Press me to your heart again;
But oh, you'll not forget me, mother,
If I'm number'd with the slain.
Oh I long to see you, mother,
And the loving ones at home,
But I'll never leave our banner
Till in honor I can come.
Tell the traitors all around you
That their cruel words, we know,
In ev'ry battle kill our soldiers
By the help they give the foe.
Hark! I hear the bugles sounding,
'Tis the signal for the fight,
Now may God protect us, mother,
As he ever does the right.
Hear the "Battle Cry of Freedom,"
How it swells upon the air,
Oh, yes, we'll rally round the standard,
Or we'll perish nobly there.
--_George F. Root._
George F. Root was born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, in 1820. He has
perhaps written more popular war songs than any other American. His
songs have carried his name to the ends of the earth. He was a musician
from childhood. He began as a boy by getting hold of every musical
instrument he could find and attempting to master it. When about
eighteen years of age, he left his father's farm in the beautiful
Housatonic Valley, and went to Boston to obtain instruction in music,
which he had already determined to make his life-work. He was very
fortunate in finding employment with a Boston teacher named A. B.
Johnson, who also took the young countryman into his own home and
manifested the warmest interest in his superior musical gifts. It was
not long before young Root became a partner in Mr. Johnson's school. He
was ambitious and industrious, and was soon acting as leader for a
number of church choirs. There are several churches in Boston to-day
which recall as one of the legends of their history that George F. Root
used to lead their music. His reputation as a teacher spread so rapidly
that he was sought after to give special instruction in other
institutions. Later he went to New York and became the principal of the
Abbott Institute.
Mr. Root was not satisfied to make anything less than the best out of
himself, and so went to Europe in 1850 and spent a year in special work
improving his musical talent. About this time he began writing songs, in
which he had success from the start. These won him such wide recognition
that Mason and Bradbury, the great musical publishers of that day,
secured his aid in the making of church music books. He now retired from
the field of teaching and devoted himself to composing music and the
holding of great musical conventions.
On the breaking out of the war, Dr. Root was in Chicago, and from that
Western center of patriotic fire and enthusiasm he sent forth scores of
songs that thrilled the heart of the country. While the _Battle Cry of
Freedom_ was perhaps his most famous song, there are a number of others
that keep, even to this day, close company with it in popularity. The
old veterans who still linger on the scene, as well as those who were
but boys and girls in those days, well remember the martial enthusiasm
that was evoked by his prison song, _Tramp, Tramp, Tramp!_ The mingled
pathos and hopefulness of it has been rarely, if ever, surpassed:--
"In the prison cell I sit,
Thinking, mother dear, of you,
And our bright and happy home so far away,
And the tears they fill my eyes,
Spite of all that I can do,
Tho' I try to cheer my comrades and be gay.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,
Cheer up, comrades, they will come,
And beneath the starry flag
We will breathe the air again,
Of the freeland in our own beloved home.
"In the battle front we stood,
When their fiercest charge they made,
And they swept us off a hundred men or more;
But before we reached their lines,
They were beaten back dismayed,
And we heard the cry of vict'ry o'er and o'er.
"So within the prison cell,
We are waiting for the day
That shall come to open wide the iron door,
And the hollow eye grows bright,
And the poor heart almost gay,
As we think of seeing home and friends once more."
To appreciate the pathos of that song one needs to hear a company of
Grand Army Veterans tell about singing it in Andersonville or Libby
Prisons.
[Illustration: _FORTRESS MONROE_]
_Just Before the Battle, Mother_ appealed to the tender side of those
who remained at home, and made it a very popular song not only for
public gatherings, but in drawing-rooms, and camps in the twilight of
the evening. The sequel to it, _Just After the Battle_, was equally as
popular and retains its popularity though a generation has passed away
since it was written. It, too, has the vein of optimism in it which runs
through all of Doctor Root's work. Perhaps that is one of the secrets of
his great power over the human heart. While he makes us weep with the
tenderness of the sentiment, there is always a rainbow on his cloud, a
rainbow with promises of a brighter to-morrow. _Just After the Battle_
has that rainbow in it, in the hope expressed by the singer that he
shall still see his mother again in the old home:--
"Still upon the field of battle
I am lying, mother dear,
With my wounded comrades waiting
For the morning to appear.
Many sleep to waken never,
In this world of strife and death,
And many more are faintly calling,
With their feeble dying breath.
Mother dear, your boy is wounded,
And the night is drear with pain,
But still I feel that I shall see you,
And the dear old home again.
"Oh, the first great charge was fearful,
And a thousand brave men fell,
Still, amid the dreadful carnage,
I was safe from shot and shell.
So, amid the fatal shower,
I had nearly pass'd the day,
When here the dreaded Minie struck me,
And I sunk amid the fray.
"Oh, the glorious cheer of triumph,
When the foeman turn'd and fled,
Leaving us the field of battle,
Strewn with dying and with dead.
Oh, the torture and the anguish,
That I could not follow on,
But here amid my fallen comrades,
I must wait till morning's dawn."
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _CHARLES CARROLL SAWYER_]
_WHEN THIS CRUEL WAR IS OVER_.
Dearest love, do you remember,
When we last did meet,
How you told me that you lov'd me,
Kneeling at my feet?
Oh! how proud you stood before me,
In your suit of blue,
When you vow'd to me and country
Ever to be true.
Weeping, sad and lonely,
Hopes and fears how vain!
When this cruel war is over,
Praying that we meet again!
When the summer breeze is sighing,
Mournfully along;
Or when autumn leaves are falling,
Sadly breathes the song.
Oft in dreams I see thee lying
On the battle plain,
Lonely, wounded, even dying,
Calling, but in vain.
If amid the din of battle
Nobly you should fall,
Far away from those who love you,
None to hear you call--
Who would whisper words of comfort
Who would soothe your pain?
Ah! the many cruel fancies,
Ever in my brain.
But our country call'd you, darling,
Angels cheer your way;
While our nation's sons are fighting,
We can only pray.
Nobly strike for God and liberty,
Let all nations see
How we love the starry banner,
Emblem of the free.
--_Charles Carroll Sawyer._
Charles Carroll Sawyer was born in Mystic, Connecticut, in 1833. His
father, Captain Joshua Sawyer, was an old-fashioned Yankee sea captain.
The family moved to New York when Charles was quite young, and he
obtained his education in that city. The poetic instinct was marked in
his youth, and at the age of twelve he wrote several sonnets which
attracted a good deal of attention among his acquaintances. At the
breaking out of the war he began to write war songs, and in a few months
was recognized everywhere as one of the most successful musical
composers of the day. His most popular songs were _Who will Care for
Mother Now?_ _Mother would Comfort Me_, and the one we have
selected--_When this Cruel War is Over_. Each of these three songs named
reached a sale of over a million copies before the close of the war, and
were sung in almost every mansion and farmhouse and cabin from the
Atlantic to the Pacific throughout all the northern part of the Union,
as well as in every camp where soldiers waited for battle.
His song, _Mother would Comfort Me_, was suggested, as indeed were most
of his songs, by a war incident. A soldier in one of the New York
regiments had been wounded and was taken prisoner at Gettysburg. He was
placed in a Southern hospital, and when the doctor told him that nothing
more could be done for him, his dying words were: "Mother would comfort
me if she were here." When Sawyer learned of the incident, he wrote the
song, the first verse of which runs as follows:--
"Wounded and sorrowful, far from my home,
Sick among strangers, uncared for, unknown;
Even the birds that used sweetly to sing
Are silent, and swiftly have taken the wing.
No one but mother can cheer me to-day,
No one for me could so fervently pray;
None to console me, no kind friend is near--
Mother would comfort me if she were here."
This song captured the country at once, and spread its author's fame
everywhere.
On another occasion a telegram came to a Brooklyn wife concerning her
husband who was killed on the battlefield. The last words of the
despatch read: "He was not afraid to die." Sawyer caught up that note in
the telegram, and wrote his splendid song beginning,--
"Like a true and faithful soldier
He obeyed our country's call;
Vowing to protect its banner
Or in battle proudly fall:
Noble, cheerful, brave and fearless,
When most needed, ever nigh,
Always living as a Christian,
'He was not afraid to die.'"
Another of his greatest creations found its inspiration in a similar
way. During one of the battles, among the many noble men that fell was a
young man who had been the only support of an aged and invalid mother
for years. Overhearing the doctor tell those who were near him that he
could not live, he placed his hands across his forehead, and with a
trembling voice said, while burning tears ran down his cheeks: "Who will
care for mother, now?" Sawyer took up these words which voiced the
generous heart of the dying youth, and made them the title and theme of
one of his noblest songs. The first verse is full of pathos,--
[Illustration: _U. S. BATTLE-SHIP "MAINE"_]
"Why am I so weak and weary,
See how faint my heated breath,
All around to me seems darkness,
Tell me, comrades, is this death?
Ah! how well I know your answer;
To my fate I meekly bow,
If you'll only tell me truly
Who will care for mother now?"
At that time, when every community throughout the North as well as the
South had more than one mother whose sole dependence for the future days
of weakness and old age was the strong arm of some soldier boy at the
front, this song struck a chord that was very tender, and it was sung
and whistled and played in street and theater and drawing-room
throughout the entire country.
Sawyer's songs were unique in that they were popular in both armies.
They never contained a word of malice, and appealed to the universal
human heart. At the close of the war a newspaper published at
Milledgeville, Georgia, said of Sawyer's songs, "His sentiments are
fraught with the greatest tenderness, and never one word has he written
about the South or the war that could wound the sore chords of a
Southern heart."
The most universally famous of all Sawyer's songs was _When this Cruel
War is Over_. As the long years of carnage dragged on, the fascination
for the glamour and glory of war disappeared, and its horrid cruelty
impressed people, North and South, more and more. Loving hearts in the
army and at home caught up this song as an appropriate expression of the
hunger for peace that was in their souls. A popular Southern song, _When
upon the Field of Glory_, the words of which were written by J. H.
Hewitt and the music by H. L. Schreiner, was an answer to this song of
Sawyer's. As it is one of the best of the songs of the Confederacy, it
is worth repetition here:--
"When upon the field of glory,
'Mid the battle cry,
And the smoke of cannon curling
Round the mountain high;
Then sweet mem'ries will come o'er me,
Painting home and thee,
Nerving me to deeds of daring,
Struggling to be free.
Weep no longer, dearest,
Tears are now in vain.
When this cruel war is over
We may meet again.
"Oft I think of joys departed,
Oft I think of thee;
When night's sisters throw around me,
Their star'd canopy.
Dreams so dear come o'er my pillow,
Bringing up the past,
Oh! how sweet the soldier's visions!
Oh! how short they last!
"When I stand a lonely picket,
Gazing on the moon,
As she walks her starry pathway,
In night's silent noon;
I will think that thou art looking
On her placid face,
Then our tho'ts will meet together,
In a heav'nly place.
"When the bullet, swiftly flying
Thro' the murky air,
Hits its mark, my sorrow'd bosom,
Leaving death's pang there;
Then my tho'ts on thee will turn, love,
While I prostrate lie.
My pale lips shall breathe, 'God bless thee--
For our cause I die!'
Weep then for me, dearest,
When I'm free from pain;
When this cruel war is over,
In heav'n we'll meet again."
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN_]
_MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA._
Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll sing another song,
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along,
Sing it as we used to sing it fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia.
Hurrah! hurrah! We bring the jubilee!
Hurrah! hurrah! The flag that makes you free!
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.
How the darkies shouted when they heard the joyful sound!
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found!
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground,
While we were marching through Georgia.
Yes, and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years,
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
While we were marching through Georgia.
"Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the coast!"
So the saucy rebels said, and 'twas a handsome boast,
Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon with the host,
While we were marching through Georgia.
So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude; three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia.
--_Henry Clay Work._
Among Mr. Work's famous war songs, none have captured so wide an
audience, or held their own so well since the war, as _Marching through
Georgia_. I think it is the foraging idea, so happily expressed, that,
more than anything else except the contagious music which starts the
most rheumatic foot to keeping time, has given this song its popular
sway. There was something so reckless and romantic in Sherman's cutting
loose from his base of supplies and depending on the country through
which he marched for food for his army, that the song which expressed
this seized the imagination of the people.
General Sherman in his _Memoirs_ says: "The skill and success of the men
in collecting forage was one of the features of this march. Each brigade
commander had authority to detail a company of foragers, usually about
fifty men with one or two commissioned officers, selected for their
boldness and enterprise. This party would be despatched before daylight
with a knowledge of the intended day's march and camp, would proceed on
foot five or six miles from the route traveled by their brigade, and
then visit every plantation and farm within range. They would usually
procure a wagon, or family carriage, load it with bacon, cornmeal,
turkeys, chickens, ducks, and everything that could be used as food or
forage, and would then regain the main road, usually in advance of their
train. When this came up, they would deliver to the brigade commissary
the supplies thus gathered by the way. Often would I pass these foraging
parties at the roadside, waiting for their wagons to come up, and was
amused at their strange collections--mules, horses, even cattle, packed
with old saddles and loaded with hams, bacon, bags of cornmeal, and
poultry of every character and description. Although this foraging was
attended with great danger and hard work, there seemed to be a charm
about it that attracted the soldiers, and it was a privilege to be
detailed on such a party. Daily they returned mounted on all sorts of
beasts, which were at once taken from them and appropriated to the
general use; but the next day they would start out again on foot, only
to repeat the experience of the day before."
Bishop Ames, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, used to greatly enjoy
relating how he was invited to share the carriage of a German Baron on
the occasion of the great military review in Washington at the close of
the war. They had a favorable position for viewing the procession. Hour
after hour the soldiers marched by. There rumbled the field artillery;
there crowded by, with dripping sides and champing mouths, the cavalry,
and after them tramped the unwearying infantry. At one time there passed
a brigade clothed in brand-new uniforms, specially brought out for the
occasion. Every uniform was clean and beautiful, every bayonet and sword
polished and gleaming. The drill was perfect. The men were at the
highest point of condition. Every motion and look bespoke the
well-drilled soldier. As they marched by the Baron turned around
excitedly to Bishop Ames and said, "Pishop, those men can whip the
world."
[Illustration: _SHERMAN BURNS ATLANTA AND MARCHES TOWARD THE SEA_]
Immediately following them, purposely to bring out the strong contrast,
was a brigade of old veterans, just as they came from their long
campaign in the South. They were some of the men who had marched with
Sherman to the sea--the men who had picked up the ducks and the cornmeal
by the wayside. They were soiled and ragged. One man had one leg of his
trousers patched out by strange cloth; another had no coat; another had
a teakettle swung on his gun over his shoulder; another had part of a
ham on his bayonet. So they represented the march through Georgia.
They rolled along with an easy, swinging gait, chatting, laughing,
occasionally imitating some animal, giving a bark, or a howl, or a
screech, yet every man a soldier and keeping step to the music and in
line. As these men with their tattered uniforms and torn and stained
flags went by, the Baron sprang up, and with tears rolling down his
cheeks, threw his arms around Bishop Ames and cried: "Mein Gott! Pishop,
these men could _whip the devil_!"
General Sherman himself was never enthusiastic over the song that has
immortalized his famous march. I have been unable to find in his
_Memoirs_ a single reference to it; but he quotes there in full a fine
song by Adjutant S. H. M. Byers which he evidently would have been very
glad to have had replace the simpler lines of Mr. Work. But Work had the
key to the people's heart, and his song will live as long as the
American flag. Mr. Byers' song, however, is a splendid piece of work and
well worth repeating here. General Sherman says that on the afternoon of
February 17, 1865, on overhauling his pockets, according to custom, to
read more carefully the various notes and memoranda received during the
day, he found a paper which had been given him by a Union prisoner who
had escaped from Columbia. "It proved," writes the General, "to be the
song of _Sherman's March to the Sea_, which had been composed by
Adjutant S. H. M. Byers, of the Fifth Iowa Infantry, when a prisoner
in the asylum at Columbia, which had been beautifully written off by a
fellow-prisoner, and handed to me in person. This appeared to me so good
that I at once sent for Byers, attached him to my staff, provided him
with horse and equipment, and took him as far as Fayetteville, North
Carolina, whence he was sent to Washington as bearer of despatches."
The writing of this song was a good thing for Byers, as it secured him
the lifelong friendship of General Sherman, and through his kindly
support he was afterward made consul at Zurich, Switzerland. Adjutant
Byers said that there was among the prisoners at Columbia an excellent
glee club who used to sing it well, with an audience, often, of rebel
ladies. It is truly a fine poem:--
"Our camp-fires shone bright on the mountain
That frowned on the river below,
As we stood by our guns in the morning,
And eagerly watched for the foe;
When a rider came out of the darkness
That hung over mountain and tree,
And shouted, 'Boys, up and be ready!
For Sherman will march to the sea!'
Then sang we the song of our chieftain,
That echoed over river and lea;
And the stars in our banner shone brighter
When Sherman marched down to the sea!
"Then cheer upon cheer for bold Sherman
Went up from each valley and glen,
And the bugles reëchoed the music
That came from the lips of the men;
For we knew that the stars in our banner
More bright in their splendor would be,
And that blessings from Northland would greet us,
When Sherman marched down to the sea!
"Then forward, boys! forward to battle!
We marched on our wearisome way,
We stormed the wild hills of Resaca--
God bless those who fell on that day!
Then Kenesaw frowned in its glory,
Frowned down on the flag of the free;
But the East and the West bore our standard,
And Sherman marched on to the sea!
"Still onward we pressed, till our banners
Swept out from Atlanta's grim walls,
And the blood of the patriot dampened
The soil where the traitor-flag falls;
But we paused not to weep for the fallen,
Who slept by each river and tree,
Yet we twined a wreath of the laurel
As Sherman marched down to the sea!
"Oh, proud was our army that morning,
That stood where the pine darkly towers,
When Sherman said, 'Boys, you are weary,
But to-day fair Savannah is ours!'
Then sang we the song of our chieftain,
That echoed over river and lea;
And the stars in our banner shone brighter
When Sherman camped down by the sea!"
[Illustration: _Plymouth Rock_]
[Illustration: _ROBERT EDWARD LEE_]
_MY MARYLAND._
The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Hark to an exiled son's appeal,
Maryland!
My mother State, to thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life or death, for woe or weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll's sacred trust,
Remember Howard's warlike thrust,
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Come! 'Tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!
With Ringgold's spirit for the fray,
With Watson's blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Dear mother, burst the tyrant's chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain,
"_Sic semper!_" 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back amain,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,
Maryland!
Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,
Maryland!
Come to thine own heroic throng
Stalking with liberty along,
And chant thy dauntless slogan-song,
Maryland, my Maryland!
I see the blush upon thy cheek,
Maryland!
But thou wast ever bravely meek,
Maryland!
But lo! There surges forth a shriek,
From hill to hill, from creek to creek,
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll,
Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the shot, the blade, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland, my Maryland!
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The "Old Line's" bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb;
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum--
She breathes, she burns! She'll come!
She'll come!
Maryland, my Maryland!
--_James Ryder Randall._
_My Maryland_, one of the most popular songs of the Confederacy, was
written by James Ryder Randall, in 1861. Randall was at that time
professor of English literature at Poydras College, upon the Fausse
Rivière, of Louisiana. He was very young, and had but recently come from
college in Maryland. He was full of poetry and romance, and when one day
in April, 1861, he read in the New Orleans _Delta_ the news of the
attack on the Massachusetts Sixth as they passed through Baltimore, it
fired his blood. "This account excited me greatly," Mr. Randall writes.
"I had long been absent from my native city, and the startling event
there inflamed my mind. That night I could not sleep, for my nerves were
all unstrung, and I could not dismiss what I had read in the paper from
my mind. About midnight I arose, lit a candle, and went to my desk. Some
powerful spirit appeared to possess me, and almost involuntarily I
proceeded to write the song of _My Maryland_. I remember that the idea
appeared to take shape first as music in the brain--some wild air that I
cannot now recall. The whole poem of nine stanzas, as originally
written, was dashed off rapidly when once begun."
[Illustration: _THE INVASION OF MARYLAND_
(_View from Maryland Heights_)]
As Doctor Matthews well says, there is often a feeling afloat in the
minds of men, undefined and vague for want of one to give it form, and
held in solution, as it were, until a chance word dropped in the ear of
a poet suddenly crystallizes this feeling into song, in which all may
see clearly and sharply reflected what in their own thought was
shapeless and hazy. It was young Randall's fortune to be the instrument
through which the South spoke, and, by a natural reaction, his burning
lines helped "fire the Southern heart."
The form of the poem was suggested by Mangan's _Karamanian Exile_,--
"I see thee ever in my dreams,
Karaman!
Thy hundred hills, thy thousand streams,
Karaman, O Karaman!
As when thy gold-bright morning gleams,
As when the deepening sunset seams
With lines of light thy hills and streams,
Karaman!
So now thou loomest on my dreams,
Karaman, O Karaman!"
The previous use of this form, which is perhaps the most effective
possible for a battle hymn, by no means detracts from Randall's stirring
poem.
The poem would never have had great effect, however, if it had not been
fortunate in drafting to its service a splendid piece of music. Miss
Hattie Cary, of Baltimore, afterward the wife of Professor H. M. Martin,
of Johns-Hopkins University, brought about the wedding which enabled
Randall's song to reach every camp-fire of the Southern armies. "The
Glee Club was to hold its meeting in our parlors one evening early in
June," she writes, "and my sister Jennie, being the only musical member
of the family, had charge of the program on the occasion. With a
schoolgirl's eagerness to score a success, she resolved to secure some
new and ardent expression of feelings that were by this time wrought up
to the point of explosion. In vain she searched through her stock of
songs and airs--nothing seemed intense enough to suit her. Aroused by
her tone of despair, I came to the rescue with the suggestion that she
should adapt the words of _Maryland, my Maryland_, which had been
constantly on my lips since the appearance of the lyric a few days
before in the South. I produced the paper and began declaiming the
verses. '_Lauriger Horatius_,' she exclaimed, and in a flash the
immortal song found a voice in the stirring air so perfectly adapted to
it. That night when her contralto voice rang out the stanzas, the
refrain rolled forth from every throat without pause or preparation; and
the enthusiasm communicated itself with such effect to the crowd
assembled beneath our windows as to endanger seriously the liberties of
the party."
This air was originally an old German student melody used for a lovely
German lyric, _Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum_, which Longfellow has numbered
among his translations. The first verse is as follows,--
"O hemlock tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches!
Green not only in summer time,
But in the winter's frost and rime!
O hemlock tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches!"
Some one has well said that the transmigration of tunes is a large and
fertile subject. The capturing of the air of a jolly college song and
harnessing it to the service of a fiery battle hymn may seem very
strange, but not so to those who are familiar with the adventures which
a tune has often undergone.
This song was not only popular through the South, but so stately and
pleasing was the melody that it was often sung in the North. A soldier
relates: "I remember hearing it sung under circumstances that for the
time made me fancy it was the sweetest song I ever listened to. Our
command had just reached Frederick City, Maryland, after a distressing
forced march, and going into bivouac, the staff to which I was attached
took up their quarters on the piazza of a lonely mansion, and there,
wrapping themselves in their blankets, with their saddles for pillows,
sought needed repose. Sleep would not come to my eyelids. The night was
a delicious one; it was warm, but a slight breeze was stirring, and the
sky was clear, and the stars shone brilliantly. The stillness was
profound, every one around me was asleep, when suddenly there fell
upon my ears the song:--
'The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!'
The voice was a mezzo-soprano, full, round, and clear, and the charming
melody was sung with infinite tenderness and delicacy of shading. I
listened almost breathlessly, for it was the first time I had heard the
song, and as it was ended, I arose for the purpose of ascertaining who
it was that sang so sweetly. I found her in the person of a plump negro
girl of about sixteen years, with a face blacker than the smoke in
Vulcan's smithy."
A delightful contrast to the attack of the mob on the Massachusetts
Sixth, in Baltimore, in 1861, was furnished recently when the historic
Sixth from Boston passed through Baltimore on their way to the South to
take part in the invasion of Cuba. Baltimore gave herself up to seeing
how splendidly she could receive the regiment that had once been mobbed
in her streets. They were received at the station by the Mayor, the
school-children were drawn up in line along the route of march, and the
soldiers from Massachusetts were pelted with flowers instead of stones
and bullets. Each soldier was given a little box containing cake and
fruit, and a love letter, while a great motto met their eyes which said:
"Let the welcome of '98 efface the memory of '61."
[Illustration: _ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT_]
_ALL QUIET ALONG THE POTOMAC._
"All quiet along the Potomac," they say,
"Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing: a private or two now and then
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost, only one of the men
Moaning out all alone the death-rattle."
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
Or the light of the watchfires, are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night-wind
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping:
While stars up above, with their glittering eyes,
Keep guard,--for the army is sleeping.
There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread,
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed,
Far away in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack, his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep;
For their mother--may heaven defend her!
The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then,
That night when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips, when low, murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken;
Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to his side,
As if to keep down the heart swelling.
He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree,
The footstep is lagging and weary,
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shade of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves,
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle--"Ha! Mary, good-bye,"
And the lifeblood is ebbing and plashing.
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.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves,
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle--"Ha! Mary, good-bye,"
And the lifeblood is ebbing and plashing.
--_Ethel Lynn Beers._
Mrs. Beers's right to the authorship of this famous song has been very
severely contested, but there seems to be no reason now to doubt that
the really fine poem is hers. Though there have been numerous claimants
for its authorship, the one who has come nearest to carrying the day is,
strange to say, a Southerner. It is curious indeed that a war song
should be claimed by both sides, but that has been the story of this
song. This Southerner is Lamar Fontaine. Mr. Fontaine was born at Gay
Hill, Texas. Twenty years before the war his father moved to Austin,
Texas, and was secretary to General Lamar, for whom the son was named.
When the war broke out this young Lamar Fontaine became a major in the
Confederate Army. Some time in 1862, when the poem _All Quiet Along the
Potomac_ appeared in a Southern newspaper, Lamar Fontaine's name was
attached to it. Davidson, the author of _Living Writers of the South_,
wrote to Fontaine in regard to the authorship of this hymn, and in
replying Fontaine said: "The poem in question was written by me while
our army lay at Fairfax Courthouse, or rather the greater portion, in
and around that place. On the second day of August, 1861, I first read
it to a few of my messmates in Company I, Second Virginia Cavalry.
During the month of August I gave away many manuscript copies to
soldiers, and some few to ladies in and about Leesburg, Loudon County,
Virginia. In fact, I think that most of the men belonging to the Second
Virginia, then commanded by Colonel Radford, were aware of the fact that
I was the author of it. I never saw the piece in print until just before
the battle of Leesburg (October 21, 1861), and then it was in a Northern
paper with the notice that it had been found on the dead body of a
picket. I hope the controversy between myself and others in regard to
_All Quiet Along the Potomac To-night_, will soon be forever settled. I
wrote it, and the world knows it; and they may howl over it, and give it
to as many authors as they please. I wrote it, and I am a Southern man,
and I am proud of the title, and am glad that my children will know that
the South was the birthplace of their fathers, from their generation
back to the seventh."
Another Southern man, however, and a distinguished one, puts a very
different look on the case. Mr. Chandler Harris of Georgia writes a
letter for insertion in Mr. Davidson's volume in the course of which he
says: "After a careful and impartial investigation of all the facts in
my reach, I have come to the conclusion that Mrs. Beers, and not Mr.
Fontaine, wrote the poem in question. My reasons for believing that Mr.
Fontaine is not the author of _All Quiet_, are several:
"1. The poem appeared in _Harper's Weekly_ for November 30, 1861, as
_The Picket Guard_, over the initials of Mrs. Ethel Beers of New
York.
[Illustration: _MOUNT VERNON_]
"2. It did not make its appearance in any Southern paper until about
April or May, 1862.
"3. It was published as having been found in the pocket of a dead
soldier on the battlefield. It is more than probable that the dead
soldier was a Federal, and that the poem had been clipped from
_Harper's_.
"4. I have compared the poem in _Harper's_ with the same as it first
appeared in the Southern papers, and find the punctuation to be
precisely the same.
"5. Mr. Fontaine, so far as I have seen, has given elsewhere no evidence
of the powers displayed in that poem. I, however, remember noticing in
the Charleston _Courier_, in 1863, or 1864, a 'Parodie' (as Mr. L. F.
had it) on Mrs. Norton's _Bingen on the Rhine_, which was positively the
poorest affair I ever saw. Mr. Fontaine had just come out of a Federal
prison, and some irresponsible editor, in speaking of this 'Parodie'
remarked that the poet's Pegasus had probably worn his wings out against
the walls of his Northern dungeon.
"You probably know me well enough to acquit me, in this instance at
least, of the charge of prejudice. I am jealous of Southern literature,
and if I have any partiality in the matter at all, it is in favor of
Major Lamar Fontaine's claim. I should like to claim this poem for that
gentleman; I should be glad to claim it as a specimen of Southern
literature, but the facts in the case do not warrant it."
Mr. Alfred H. Guernsey, for many years editor of _Harper's Magazine_,
bears testimony that the poem, bearing the title _The Picket Guard_,
appeared in _Harper's Weekly_ for November 30, 1861. He further declares
that it was furnished by Mrs. Ethel Lynn Beers, whom he describes as "a
lady whom I think incapable of palming off as her own any production of
another."
Mrs. Beers was born in Goshen, New York, and her maiden name was
Ethelinda Eliot. She was a direct descendant of John Eliot, the heroic
apostle to the Indians. When she began to write for the newspapers she
signed her contributions "Ethel Lynn," a _nom de plume_ very naturally
suggested by her Christian name. After her marriage, she added her
husband's name, and over the signature of Ethel Lynn Beers published
many poems. In her later years Mrs. Beers resided in Orange, New Jersey,
where she died October 10, 1879, on the very day on which her poems,
among them _All Quiet Along the Potomac_, were issued in book form.
There has never been any contest as to the music of the song, which was
composed by J. Dayton, the leader of the band of the First Connecticut
Artillery.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER_]
_THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME._
Way down upon de Suwanee ribber,
Far, far away,
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber,
Dere's wha de old folks stay.
All up and down de whole creation,
Sadly I roam,
Still longin' for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home.
All de world am sad and dreary,
Eb'rywhere I roam.
Oh! darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home.
All round de little farm I wander'd
When I was young,
Den many happy days I squander'd,
Many de songs I sung.
When I was playin' wid my brudder,
Happy was I,
Oh! take me to my kind old mudder,
Dere let me live and die.
One little hut among de bushes,
One dat I love,
Still sadly to my mem'ry rushes,
No matter where I rove.
When will I see de bees a-humming
All round de comb?
When will I hear de banjo tumming
Down in my good old home?
--_Stephen Collins Foster._
Stephen Collins Foster has a very tender place in the hearts of the
American people. His songs are marked by a tenderness and pathos which
goes straight to the fountain of tears. Foster was born on the 4th of
July, 1826, at Lawrenceburg, Pennsylvania. His native town was founded
by his father, but was many years ago merged into the city of Pittsburg.
Young Foster had good opportunities for education in an academy at
Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and afterward at Jefferson College. He had a
genius for music almost from his birth; while yet but a baby he could
wake sweet harmonies from any musical instrument he touched. At the age
of seven he had mastered the flageolet without a teacher, and had
already become quite proficient on the piano and the flute. He had a
clear though not a very strong voice, but one that was under perfect
control. As a lad he wrote his first composition, a waltz, which was
rendered at a school commencement. The composition, coming from so young
a boy, attracted a good deal of attention. His talent for music was so
marked that he became the leader throughout his school days of all
musical affairs among the students, and he was the center of every
serenading party or concert. To compose the words and music of a song
was his chief delight. He wrote the words first, and then hummed them
over and over till he found notes that would express them properly.
While he was in the academy a minstrel troupe came to town and he
attended their performance. He succeeded in having one of his songs
introduced into their program the next night, which greatly pleased the
local public. This was _Oh, Susanna_, which was afterward published in
1842, and immediately gained great popularity. This aroused his musical
enthusiasm, and he offered still other songs to publishers, and finally
determined to devote himself to musical composition for a livelihood. He
attended all the negro camp meetings he could reach, listened to the
songs of colored people, gathering new ideas, and this faithful
reproduction of what was up to that time an undiscovered mine of musical
possibilities, was the secret of his great success as a writer of negro
melodies.
Foster had a deeply poetic soul, and would go into the wildest ecstasy
over a pretty melody or a bit of rich harmony. There is a certain vein
of tender retrospect in nearly all his songs. Take _Old Dog Tray_, of
which a hundred and twenty-five thousand copies were sold the first
eighteen months after publication. There is something exceedingly
tender about it:--
"The morn of life is past, and ev'ning comes at last,
It brings me a dream of a once happy day,
Of merry forms I've seen upon the village green,
Sporting with my old dog Tray.
Old dog Tray's ever faithful,
Grief cannot drive him away,
He's gentle, he is kind; I'll never, never find
A better friend than Old Dog Tray!"
How often we say one to another, "It is good to be missed." But no one
has ever voiced that universal feeling of the heart as perfectly as has
Foster in his popular song, _Do They Miss Me at Home?_
"Do they miss me at home, do they miss me?
'Twould be an assurance most dear,
To know that this moment some lov'd one
Were saying, 'I wish he were here';
To feel that the group at the fireside
Were thinking of me as I roam;
Oh, yes, 'twould be joy beyond measure
To know that they miss me at home."
[Illustration:
"_Still longin' for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home_"
]
Foster was a most prolific writer, producing between two and three
hundred popular songs, furnishing both the words and the music. Among
his best known war songs are _We've a Million in the_ _Field_,
_Stand by the Flag_, _For the Dear Old Flag I Die_, and _Was my Brother
in the Battle?_ His most famous song, however, and one which he hoped
would rival _Home, Sweet Home_,--a song of which the soldiers amid the
loneliness and homesickness of camp never grew weary--was _The Old Folks
at Home_. For the time it has been before the public, it is probably the
best known song in the world. Four hundred thousand copies of it were
sold the first few years after it was written. The tune has crossed all
oceans and become a favorite with martial bands of music in every region
of the earth.
The author of this sweet old melody that touches the heart of all
peoples closed his life in great sorrow and poverty. In the days of his
youth and early manhood he was greatly beloved by all who knew him. He
had multitudes of friends and in character was modest, unassuming, and
almost as shy as a girl. He was happily married in 1854, in Pittsburg,
but the bright prospects which he then had of a happy home life were
eclipsed through his yielding to the appetite for strong drink. In 1860
his dissipation separated him from his family, and he settled in New
York City, where for awhile he kept an old down-town grocery on the
corner of Hester and Christy Streets. Some of his most famous songs were
composed in the back room of that old grocery on pieces of brown
wrapping-paper. Many of these songs that under the impelling force of
his appetite for drink were sold for a few dollars, often brought
hundreds and even thousands of dollars to the purchasers.
On the 12th of January, 1864, he was injured by a fall, and died on the
following day in Bellevue Hospital, friendless, and in abject poverty.
This brilliant man whose melodies were sung by hundreds and thousands of
tongues, and to whom a single publisher had paid more than twenty
thousand dollars of royalties on his music, died lonely in a great city,
and his body was carried back to his native State through the charity of
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. His funeral, however, was attended by
an immense concourse of people, comprising both the rich and poor of
Pittsburg who remembered his brighter days, and who felt that the city
was honored by his genius. Musicians attended in large force, and the
songs they sang above his grave were his own melodies.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _FRANCIS MILES FINCH_]
_THE BLUE AND THE GRAY._
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the one the Blue;
Under the other the Gray.
These, in the robings of glory;
Those, in the gloom of defeat;
All, with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the laurel, the Blue;
Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers
Alike for the friend and foe;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the roses, the Blue;
Under the lilies, the Gray.
So, with an equal splendor,
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Broidered with gold, the Blue;
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So when the summer calleth
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Wet with the rain, the Blue;
Wet with the rain, the Gray.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done;
In the storm of the years that are fading,
No braver battle was won;
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the blossoms, the Blue;
Under the garlands, the Gray.
No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever,
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the judgment day;
Love and tears for the Blue;
Tears and love for the Gray.
--_Francis Miles Finch._
Francis Miles Finch, the author of _The Blue and the Gray_, was born in
Ithaca, New York, in 1827. He graduated with honor from Yale College in
1845 in his eighteenth year. He studied law and became a practicing
lawyer of fine reputation at Ithaca, being elected an associate judge of
the Court of Appeals of the State of New York in 1881. In July, 1853, he
read a poem at the centennial celebration of the Linonian Society of
Yale, in which several lyrics were introduced, including one on Nathan
Hale, the patriot spy of the Revolution. This at once achieved wide
popularity. His one poem, however, which will carry his name down to the
future is _The Blue and the Gray_.
Two years after the war of the Rebellion there appeared in the New York
_Tribune_, the following item: "The women of Columbus, Mississippi,
animated by nobler sentiments than many of their sisters, have shown
themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead.
They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the
National soldiers." This, coming at a time when a great deal of the
soreness of defeat and the bitterness aroused by the war still
remained, seemed to be the first indication of an era of more kindly
feeling and a more generous Christian spirit.
The eye of a poet is always seeing the poetic possibilities in current
incidents, and when Mr. Finch saw this news item in his favorite daily
paper, he not only saw the romance and pathos of the situation, but
thought that such an exhibition of generosity should be at once met and
welcomed in the same temper. It was out of that impulse that _The Blue
and the Gray_ grew into being. Mr. Finch sent it to the _Atlantic
Monthly_, where it was published in the September number of 1867,
prefaced with the news extract from the _Tribune_ which had suggested
it. The poem at once aroused marked attention and became popular
throughout the entire country, but especially so in the South.
John Hutchinson was paying a visit to Vinnie Ream, the sculptor, who
designed the General Thomas monument in April, 1874. Among the guests
were three ex-Confederate generals. At her request Hutchinson sang _The
Blue and the Gray_; when he had finished singing the song, the three
Confederates rose simultaneously, and one after the other shook his hand
with great heartiness. "Mr. Hutchinson," they said, "that song is a
passport to you anywhere in the South." Alexander H. Stephens, the
ex-vice-president of the Confederacy, upon hearing from these gentlemen
of Mr. Hutchinson's singing, sent a special request to him to come
to his hotel and sing _The Blue and the Gray_. He was wheeled into the
room in his chair to listen to the song. At the conclusion he declared
that the country was safe when such sentiments became popular.
[Illustration: _GRANT'S MONUMENT_]
Mr. Hutchinson himself composed the music for Finch's famous song. At
the great Atlanta Exposition in 1895, Mr. Hutchinson made the journey to
Atlanta by special invitation of the management, and was present on
"Blue and Gray" Day. He says of the experience: "Who can picture my
thoughts on that notable occasion? To think that, at last, the man who
had known what it was to be maligned and buffeted in the South, should
be received with honor in its chief city, and witness the effects of
reconstruction in the great cotton country! It was a 'New South,'
indeed, that I saw. And there, to the great gathering of Union and
Confederate soldiers, I sang the song that had so often in later years
been a key to open the Southern heart to the Hutchinsons:--
"'No more shall the war cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever,
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Love and tears for the Blue;
Tears and love for the Gray.'"
Perhaps no one thing has done so much to soften the bitterness which
civil war left in our country as the beautiful ceremonies connected with
Memorial Day. As the years have gone on, and every Memorial Day the
Southern soldiers have been more and more wont to cover the graves of
their dead foemen with wreaths of Southern flowers, and again and again
gray-haired veterans from both the "Blue and the Gray" have met beside
the Hudson to do honor to the great commander who at Appomattox said,
"Let us have peace," the coldness of suspicion and distrust have blown
away, until, now that the boys from the South as well as from the North
have marched together again under the old flag to fight a foreign foe,
we see eye to eye.
The birth of Decoration Day deserves to be held in everlasting
remembrance. Mrs. John A. Logan, the wife of the great Volunteer
General, in company with some friends, made a trip to Richmond in March,
1868. Mrs. Logan was particularly impressed by the evidences of
desolation and destruction which she witnessed everywhere, but which
seemed to her to be particularly emphasized by the innumerable graves
which filled the cemeteries, many of which were those of Confederate
soldiers. In the summer before they had all been decorated by wreaths of
flowers and little flags, all of which were faded, but which seemed to
the tender-hearted woman to be a mute evidence of the devotion and
gratitude of those people to the men who had lost their lives to their
cause.
On speaking of this to General Logan, on her return, he said it was a
beautiful custom and one worthy to be copied, and, as he was then
Commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, that he intended
issuing an order, asking the entire people of the nation to inaugurate
the custom of annually decorating the graves of the patriotic dead as a
memorial of their sacrifice and devotion to country. He issued the first
order for May 30, 1868, and it was so enthusiastically received that
Congress made it a national holiday.
It will thus be seen, that Memorial Day was born out of a partnership
between a woman's tender heart and a man's noble purpose. It is also
sweet to reflect that South and North united at its birth. The Southern
mourners were the first to cover the graves of their dead with flowers,
as they were the first to decorate the graves of their fallen foes;
while their Northern brothers led in calling to it national attention,
and made the custom as wide as the country. From henceforth we all unite
in the closing couplet of Finch's noble song:--
"Love and tears for the Blue;
Tears and love for the Gray."
[Illustration: _JAMES THOMSON_]
_RULE, BRITANNIA._
When Britain first, at heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter, the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung the strain:
Rule, Britannia,
Britannia rule the waves,
Britons never shall be slaves.
The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must in their turn to tyrants fall,
While thou shalt flourish, great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
Rule, Britannia,
Britannia rule the waves,
Britons never shall be slaves.
Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast that rends the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak.
Rule, Britannia,
Britannia rule the waves,
Britons never shall be slaves.
Thee, haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,--
But work their woe and thy renown.
Rule, Britannia,
Britannia rule the waves,
Britons never shall be slaves.
To thee belongs the rural reign,
Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore encircles thine.
Rule, Britannia,
Britannia rule the waves,
Britons never shall be slaves.
The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coasts repair,
Blessed Isle! With matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair.
Rule, Britannia,
Britannia rule the waves,
Britons never shall be slaves.
--_James Thomson._
The poet Southey declares that this noble ode in honor of Great Britain
will be the political hymn of that country as long as she maintains her
political power. It had a peculiar origin. Dr. Thomas Arne, the great
musical composer, composed the music for his _Masque of Alfred_, and it
was first performed at Cliefden House, near Maidenhead, on August 1,
1740. Cliefden was then the residence of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and
the occasion was to commemorate the accession of George I. and in
honor of the birthday of young Princess Augusta. Doctor Arne afterward
altered it into an opera, and it was so performed at Drury Lane Theater
on March 20, 1745, for the benefit of Mrs. Arne. In the advertisement of
that performance Doctor Arne specially announces that _Rule Britannia_,
which he calls "a celebrated ode," will be sung. We judge from this that
it had even at that time gained great popularity.
Dr. Thomas Arne himself had a very interesting story. He was the son of
a wealthy upholsterer in London and was born in 1704. He was educated at
Eton, and his father intended him for the law, but while in school he
had such a craving for music that he would often dress himself in
servant's livery and sit in the upper gallery at the theaters. He
learned to play with the strings of his spinet muffled in a
handkerchief. One day his father attended a musicale at the house of a
friend, and to his great astonishment and disgust, his own son occupied
the place of first violinist. The father, however, decided to make the
best of it, and not to fight against nature. From that time on the
music-loving boy was allowed to play at home, and it was not very long
before the whole family were proud of his achievements. He was the first
English composer to rival Italian music in compass and difficulty.
Doctor Arne lived and died absorbed in musical tones. Death came to
him in the midst of his work, March 5, 1778. While attempting to
illustrate a musical idea, he sang an air in faltering tones; the sound
grew fainter, until song and breathing ceased together. Perhaps if he
could have chosen his way to die this would have pleased him best of
all.
The words for this _Masque of Alfred_, in which _Rule Britannia_
appears, were written jointly by James Thomson, the author of _The
Seasons_, and David Mallet, a Scotch tutor. It is not certain who was
the author of these verses, Thomson, or Mallet. During Thomson's life in
the newspapers of the day he alone was mentioned as the author. He died
in 1751, and Mallet brought out, in 1755, his _Masque of Britannia_, at
Drury Lane Theater, and it was received with great applause. The
_Monthly Review_, a Scottish magazine of the time, in noticing it says:
"_Britannia_, a Masque set to music by Doctor Arne. Mr. David Mallet is
its reputed author. His design is to animate the sons of Britannia to
vindicate their country's rights, and avenge her wrongs." On the whole,
the weight of evidence seems to be in favor of the famous ode having
been written by Thomson, but no one will ever be able to prove certainly
as to whether it originated in his brain or Mallet's.
[Illustration: _THE TOWER OF LONDON_]
_Rule Britannia_ soon became a favorite with the Jacobite party. Many
parodies of it have been written, some of which were very famous in
their time. One is to be found in _The True Royalist_, a
collection of English songs long since out of print, which is perhaps
worth repeating here:--
"Britannia, rouse at heav'n's command!
And crown thy native Prince again;
Then Peace shall bless thy happy land,
And Plenty pour in from the main:
Then shalt thou be--Britannia thou shalt be
From home and foreign tyrants free.
"Behold, great Charles! thy godlike son,
With majesty and sweetness crown'd;
His worth th' admiring world doth own,
And fame's loud trump proclaims the sound.
Thy captain him, Britannia, him declare!
Of kings and heroes he's the heir.
"The second hope young Hero claims,
Th' extended empire of the main;
His breast with fire and courage flames,
With Nature's bounds to fix thy reign.
He (Neptune-like), Britannia, will defy
All but the thunder of the sky.
"The happiest states must yield to thee,
When free from dire corruption's thrall;
Of land and sea thou'lt Emp'ror be,
And ride triumphant round the ball:
Britannia, unite! Britannia must prevail,
Her powerful hand must guide the scale."
There is still another parody, also once very famous, contained in the
book referred to. The first verse is as follows,--
"When our great Prince, with his choice band,
Arriv'd from o'er the azure main,
Heav'n smil'd with pleasure, with pleasure on the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain:
Go, brave hero; brave hero, boldly go,
And wrest thy scepter from thy foe."
In letting the parodies die, and in retaining the original song,
succeeding generations have manifestly ensured the survival of the
fittest. There has perhaps been no time since the Revolutionary War when
Americans have listened to _Rule Britannia_ with as sympathetic ears as
since the beginning of our war with Spain. The almost universal sympathy
expressed for us by all classes in England has served to bring the two
nations closer together than a hundred years of ordinary intercourse.
Whether or no it brings about the Anglo-American alliance so widely
discussed, it has made _Rule Britannia_ a grateful song to patriotic
Americans.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _OTTO EDUARD LEOPOLD VON BISMARCK-SCHÖNHAUSEN_]
_THE WATCH ON THE RHINE._
Like gathering thunder spreads a cry,
Like clash of arms when battle's nigh,
The Rhine! there's danger to the Rhine!
Who'll shield it from the foe's design?
Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine,
Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine,
Steadfast and true, we guard our German Rhine!
Steadfast and true, we guard our German Rhine!
The tidings flash through million hearts,
From million flaming eyes it darts;
Our valiant sons, in danger strong,
Will guard our hallow'd stream from wrong!
What though the foe my life should quench,
I know thy wave will ne'er be French;
And ample as thy tide of blue,
The living stream of heroes true.
The shades of heroes past and gone
Upon our deeds are looking down;
By home and Fatherland we swear
The foeman from thy banks to scare.
While through my veins the life is poured,
As long as I can hold a sword,
No stranger shall our land despoil,
No foeman desecrate our soil.
Proclaim the vow from shore to shore,
Let banners wave and cannons roar,
The Rhine! The lovely German Rhine,
To keep it Germans all combine.
Dear Fatherland, all fear resign,
Dear Fatherland, all fear resign,
Stout hearts and true will keep watch on the Rhine,
Stout hearts and true will keep watch on the Rhine.
--_Max Schneckenburger._
(_Translated by Lady Natalie MacFarren._)
_The Watch on the Rhine_ was written by Max Schneckenburger in 1840, and
though not so fine a poem from a literary standpoint as many others that
have embodied the same sentiment, it has about it that nameless charm
which has enthralled the popular heart. Although it was thirty years old
in 1870, it then struck its first great popularity and became by all
odds the most popular war song in Germany.
Schneckenburger, like many another hymn writer, owes his entire
reputation to a single song. He was an obscure Swabian merchant, quiet
and unassuming, who never did anything in his life to attract public
attention except to write this hymn. But it might well be said that in
order to make a man's name immortal he need not do anything else than
write one song that voices the soul's ambition or the heart's longing of
a great people. Max Schneckenburger is perhaps the only writer of a
popular national hymn who is not the author of other lesser songs; for
we have not been able to discover that he ever published anything except
_The Watch on the Rhine_. He died in Berne, in 1849, without the
slightest thought that his song would ever make his name famous. Long
after his death a handsome monument was built above his grave at
Thalheim, in Wurtemberg.
The music for _The Watch on the Rhine_ was composed by Carl Wilhelm, who
first arranged it as a chorus for male voices. Wilhelm was a music
teacher and conductor. He was born at Schmalkalden and died in 1873.
Carl Hauser says that Carl Wilhelm never dreamed of _The Watch on the
Rhine_ turning out to be a national hymn at the time he composed the
music. Wilhelm was a thorough Bohemian, a sort of typical German
bandmaster, who was accustomed to write music on lager-beer tables amid
the fumes of smoking pipes. He was not counted as a great musician,
except among a few bosom friends, and was satisfied to get a very small
price for his compositions, and what he received in that way usually
went to pay his beer bills.
On a certain occasion a schoolmaster who was a friend of Wilhelm asked
him as a personal favor to compose a chorus for his pupils to sing on
Commencement Day. The school-teacher saw the value of the music, and
treacherously sold it. Thousands of copies went all over the world, but
Wilhelm received no benefit therefrom. But after his music became
famous, in 1870, tardy recognition was granted him, and in 1871 he was
granted an annual pension of seven hundred and fifty dollars. He only
lived two years to enjoy it.
In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, _The Watch on the Rhine_ had for a
time a rival in a song the first verse of which ran:--
"It never shall be France's,
The free, the German Rhine,
Until its broad expanse is
Its last defender's shrine."
But when Von Moltke and old King William, with Bismarck and the Crown
Prince Frederick, pushed their armies over the Rhine toward Paris, the
war-like _Watch on the Rhine_ soon distanced all other songs in the
affections of the soldiers, and became the song of the nation.
[Illustration: _NATIONAL MONUMENT, NIEDERWALD_]
Perhaps this martial song was never sung under more splendid
circumstances than at the unveiling of the great National Monument
inaugurated in 1883 to commemorate the victories in the Franco-Prussian
war and the foundation of the new German Empire in 1870-'71. This
magnificent monument stands on the bank of the Rhine opposite the
beautiful town of Bingen, famous in history and story, on a wooded
hill nearly a thousand feet above the sea level, and flanked with
glorious vineyards. No national monument is a more perfect expression of
the spirit of a great people. The principal figure is a noble female
form, thirty-three feet in height, Germania, wearing an imperial crown,
and holding a sword wreathed with laurel as an emblem of the unity and
strength of the empire. The figure is the embodiment of self-conscious
dignity and strength. As a recent American traveler philosophizes, there
is nothing vain or conceited about it, but the pride and confidence of
one that knows and feels his power. The form erect and standing boldly
forth as if before the face of the whole world, the head gracefully
poised--thrown a little back, not haughtily nor disdainfully, but with
steadfast and self-reliant courage--seems to say, "Behold in me the
symbol of a great and mighty people!" On the right hand of the central
figure, but far beneath its feet, is a symbolical figure of War, winged,
with a helmet on its head, and a trumpet at its mouth, expressive of
Titanic energy, as if a single blast of the trumpet would bring a
million men in arms to the front. On the left is a symbolical figure of
Peace, smiling benignantly, and holding in her arms the emblems of
industry. These figures seem to say to the world, and especially to
France, "War, terrible and destructive, if we must; but Peace, if you
will."
In the hearts of the thousands of Germans gathered to unveil this great
monument, there must have been a thrill of electric energy as they sang
the popular song which it incarnated, for it stands as the crystallized
representative of _The Watch on the Rhine_.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _LA FAYETTE_]
_THE MARSEILLAISE._
Ye sons of France, awake to glory,
Hark, hark what myriads bid you rise,
Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary,
Behold their tears and hear their cries!
Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding,
With hireling hosts, a ruffian band,
Affright and desolate the land,
While peace and liberty lie bleeding?
To arms! To arms, ye brave!
Th' avenging sword unsheath!
March on, march on, all hearts resolved
To victory or death.
Now, now the dangerous storm is scowling
Which treacherous kings, confederate, raise;
The dogs of war, let loose, are howling,
And lo! our fields and cities blaze.
And shall we basely view the ruin,
While lawless force, with guilty stride,
Spreads desolation far and wide,
With crimes and blood his hands embruing?
With luxury and pride surrounded,
The vile, insatiate despots dare,
Their thirst of power and gold unbounded,
To mete and vend the light and air;
Like beasts of burden would they load us,
Like gods would bid their slaves adore:
But man is man, and who is more?
Then, shall they longer lash and goad us?
O Liberty! can man resign thee!
Once having felt thy gen'rous flame?
Can dungeon, bolts, and bars confine thee,
Or whips thy noble spirit tame?
Too long the world has wept, bewailing
That falsehood's dagger tyrants wield;
But freedom is our sword and shield,
And all their arts are unavailing.
--_Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle._
This is perhaps the most famous song in the world. Not because it is
sung more frequently than any other song, but because it has about it in
title, romantic story, and fervor, something that has touched the heart
of mankind and inspired for it a respect and admiration in all civilized
lands.
Its author, Rouget de Lisle, was a young artillery officer who had a
fancy for newspaper writing, and had contributed a number of articles to
a newspaper in Strasburg owned by the mayor of the city. He dined one
evening at his great friend's house, and the conversation turned on the
departure of several hundred volunteers from the town of Strasburg to
the Army of the Rhine. There were to be public ceremonies connected with
the departure of the troops, and Mayor Dietrich urged young De Lisle
to write a martial song to be sung on that occasion. He consented and
went at once from supper to his room. The weather was bitter cold, but
he sat down at the piano, and between reciting and playing and singing,
eventually composed the _Marseillaise_, and, thoroughly exhausted, fell
asleep with his head on his desk.
In the morning he handed the song complete, with words and music, to his
friend, Baron Dietrich. Every one was enchanted with the song, and was
roused by it to the greatest enthusiasm. It was sung a few days later at
the departure of the troops from Strasburg, and thence to the insurgents
of Marseilles, and soon to all the nation. In six months it had been
adopted by the people, the army, the legislature, and the whole country.
Its appeal to liberty and glory voiced the hunger of the popular heart
at the time, and never did song so completely charm and capture an
entire people.
De Lisle's mother was a most ardent royalist, and when the hymn was on
everybody's lips, asked of her son, "What do people mean by associating
our name with the revolutionary hymn which those brigands sing?" De
Lisle himself, proscribed as a royalist, when flying for his life in the
Jura Mountains, heard it as a menace of death, and recognizing the air
as that of his own song, asked his guide what it was called. It must
have seemed to him that day like a Nemesis of his own creation. It had
then been christened _The Marseillaise Hymn_.
De Lisle was reduced to great poverty in later years. It is
characteristic of the French nation that, a short time before his death,
when poverty and age had crushed out the hopes and ambitions of life and
he was no longer capable of receiving great joy from any honor that
might come to him, the National Government decorated him with the ribbon
of the Legion of Honor. It will no doubt do the same thing for Émile
Zola. Not long after this tardy recognition, several pensions were
conferred upon him, which he lived to enjoy but for a few months. He
died in 1836.
The English translation of the _Marseillaise_ as here given was
published in 1795, only three years after the original was written. The
translator's name is unknown, but it is considered the best English
version.
[Illustration: _VIEUX PORT, MARSEILLES_]
The popularity of the song has naturally led to a great many claimants
concerning it, especially the music. The author of a book entitled _An
Englishman in Paris_, relates a very interesting story of a certain
Alexandre Boucher, an eccentric violinist, who vowed that he (Boucher)
wrote the _Marseillaise_ for the colonel of a regiment who was about to
leave Marseilles the next day. According to this story, Boucher was
seated next Rouget de Lisle at a dinner party in Paris some years after
the _Marseillaise_ had become famous throughout the world. They
had never met before, and the violinist was very much interested in the
gentleman whom, with many others at the table, he complimented on his
production; only Boucher confined himself to complimenting him on his
poem. "You don't say a word about the music," Rouget replied, "and yet,
being a celebrated musician, that ought to interest you. Do you not like
it?" "Very much indeed," said Boucher, in a somewhat significant tone.
"Well," continued de Lisle, "let me be frank with you; the music is not
mine. It was that of a march which came heaven knows whence, and which
they kept on playing at Marseilles during the Terror when I was a
prisoner at the fortress of St. Jean. I made a few alterations
necessitated by the words, and there it is." "Thereupon," says Boucher,
"to his great surprise, I hummed the march as I had originally written
it. 'Wonderful!' he exclaimed; 'How did you come by it?' When I told
him," says the violinist, "he threw himself round my neck, but the next
moment he said: 'I am very sorry, my dear Boucher, but I am afraid that
you will be despoiled forever, do what you will; for your music and my
words go so well together that they seem to have sprung simultaneously
from the same brain, and the world, even if I proclaimed my indebtedness
to you, would never believe it.'" "Keep the loan," was Boucher's
magnanimous reply. "Without your genius, my march would be forgotten
by now. You have given it a patent of nobility. It is yours forever."
All this is very interesting, but, unfortunately for Boucher's claim, De
Lisle had put the music and the words together before the Reign of
Terror began, and the story must fall to the ground.
Under the monarchical governments in France the song has always been
held seditious, because of its extraordinary influence upon the French
people. The first time since the Revolution that it was not regarded as
treasonable by those in authority was at the opening of the World's Fair
in 1878.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _CHARLES EDWARD STUART, THE PRETENDER_]
_THE BLUE BELLS OF SCOTLAND._
Oh! where, tell me where, is your Highland laddie gone?
Oh! where, tell me where is your Highland laddie gone?
"He's gone with streaming banners where noble deeds are done,
And my sad heart will tremble till he come safely home,
He's gone with streaming banners where noble deeds are done,
And my sad heart will tremble till he come safely home."
Oh! where, tell me where, did your Highland laddie stay?
Oh! where, tell me where, did your Highland laddie stay?
"He dwelt among the holly trees, beside the rapid Spey,
And many a blessing followed him the day he went away,
He dwelt beneath the holly trees, beside the river Spey,
And many a blessing followed him the day he went away."
Oh! what, tell me what, does your Highland laddie wear?
Oh! what, tell me what, does your Highland laddie wear?
"A bonnet with a lofty plume, the gallant badge of war,
And a plaid across the manly breast, that yet shall wear a star,
A bonnet with a lofty plume, the gallant badge of war,
And a plaid across the manly breast, that yet shall wear a star."
Suppose, ah, suppose, that some cruel, cruel wound
Should pierce your Highland laddie, and all your hopes confound;
"The pipe would play a cheering march, the banners round him fly,
And for his king and country dear, with pleasure would he die,
The pipe would play a cheering march, the banners round him fly,
And for his king and country dear, with pleasure would he die.
"But I will hope to see him yet in Scotland's bonnie bounds,
But I will hope to see him yet in Scotland's bonnie bounds;
His native land of liberty shall nurse his glorious wounds,
While wide through all our Highland hills his war-like name resounds,
His native land of liberty shall nurse his glorious wounds,
While wide through all our Highland hills his war-like name resounds."
--_Annie McVicar Grant._
The father of Annie McVicar was an officer in the British army and was
transferred to this country for service in the American Colonies in
1757. When he left the old country with his troops his little daughter
was but two years old. Soon after he went away the little girl wandered
from home one day, greatly to the alarm of her family. She was overtaken
by a friend, and when asked where she was going said, "I am going to
America to see papa."
In 1758, the mother and little girl crossed the ocean and landed at
Charleston, finding still a long, tiresome trip to make before they
rejoined the beloved soldier father, who was stationed at Albany, New
York. Here it was, in this then frontier land, that Annie grew to
girlhood. She had only two treasures besides Indian trinkets and relics
of Scotland, and these were Milton and a dictionary. She committed
_Paradise Lost_ to memory, and the blind poet's good and evil angels
became as real to her as the soldiers about the fort. One day, when in
the presence of Madame Schuyler, who was the great lady of Albany at
that time, the little girl made a very appropriate quotation from Milton
which so delighted the fashionable woman that thereafter she showed the
child much kindness and regarded her as though she had been her own
daughter.
When Annie was thirteen years old her father was transferred again to
Scotland, and a few years later, at Fort Augustus, Annie McVicar fell in
love with James Grant, the chaplain of the fort. She did her duty as a
minister's wife, and one can imagine that she had plenty to do, as eight
children came to their fireside, one after another, in rapid succession.
Mr. Grant died poor, leaving his wife with these eight children
dependent upon her. She must do something to make a living and keep the
wolf from the door, and in her sore straits she gathered up the poems
which she had written from time to time, and successfully published them
by subscription. Afterward she brought out several volumes entitled
_Letters from the Mountains_, which passed through several editions and
brought her considerable profit. These fairly launched her on the sea of
authorship, and many volumes of prose and verse followed, which,
together with a pension granted her by the government, placed her in
most comfortable circumstances, and she reached the ripe age of
eighty-four, surrounded by a large circle of admiring friends in the
city of Edinburgh.
[Illustration: _STIRLING CASTLE_]
Mrs. Grant wrote _The Blue Bells of Scotland_ on the occasion of the
departure of the Marquis of Huntly for the Continent with his regiment
of Highland troops in 1799. A book entitled _The North Country
Chorister_, printed in 1802, included this song under the title _The New
Highland Lad_. Ritson, the editor of this book, says: "The song has been
lately introduced upon the stage. It was originally _The Bells of
Scotland_, but was revised by Mrs. Jordan, who altered the words and
sang them to a tune of her own which superseded the old air." When
Charles Mackay and Sir Henry Rowley Bishop were arranging old English
airs, this song came under discussion. Mackay says: "_The Blue Bells of
Scotland_ is almost invariably spoken of as a Scottish air; but Sir
Henry found reason to suspect that it was English, and urged me to write
new words to it, to dispossess, if possible, the old song of Mrs.
Jordan. He was induced to form this opinion by receiving from Mr.
Fitzgerald 'a Sussex tune' to a song commencing: 'Oh, I have been
forester this many a long day.' Three or four bars of the melody were
almost identical with the second part of _The Blue Bells of Scotland_,
but as the remainder bore no resemblance to that popular favorite, and
the whole tune was so beautiful that it was well worth preserving, I so
far complied with Sir Henry's wish as to write _The Magic Harp_ to Mr.
Fitzgerald's kind contribution to our work. Sir Henry wrote under date
of the 22nd of October, 1852, 'I am strongly of the opinion that when
Mrs. Jordan composed the music of _The Blue Bells of Scotland_, she
founded the air upon that rescued from oblivion for us by Mr.
Fitzgerald--or rather that she originally intended to sing it to that
tune, but finding some parts of it too high for her voice, which was of
a very limited compass, she altered them, and the air became that of
_The Blue Bells of Scotland_.'"
Mrs. Grant's _Highland Laddie_ and Mrs. Jordan's _Blue Bells of
Scotland_ have kept time together so long now, that it is not likely any
musical critic will ever disturb them again. The following altered
version of Mrs. Grant's song has in some places been even more popular
than the original:--
"Oh where, and oh where is your Highland laddie gone?
'He's gone to fight the French for King George upon the throne;
And it's oh! in my heart, how I wish him safe at home.'
"Oh where, and oh where does your Highland laddie dwell?
'He dwells in merrie Scotland, at the sign of the Blue Bell;
And it's oh, in my heart, that I love my laddie well.'
"What clothes, in what clothes is your Highland laddie clad?
'His bonnet's of the Saxon green, his waistcoat's of the plaid;
And it's oh! in my heart, that I love my Highland lad.'
"Suppose, oh, suppose that your Highland lad should die?
'The bagpipes shall play over him, I'll lay me down and cry;
And it's oh! in my heart, that I wish he may not die!'"
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _RUDYARD KIPLING_]
_RECESSIONAL._
God of our fathers, known of old--
Lord of our far-flung battle line--
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies--
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,
A humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
Far-called our navies melt away--
On dune and headland sinks the fire--
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not thee in awe;
Such boasting as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard--
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And, guarding, calls not thee to guard--
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on thy people, Lord!
Amen.
--_Rudyard Kipling._
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, celebrated on the 22nd of June, 1897,
has gone into history as the greatest human pageant in the whole story
of humanity. As sovereign of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of
India, she occupies the most powerful position on earth. In addition to
the material power represented, the admiration and love in which she is
held by the truest people of every nation and kindred, because of her
wise reign as well as her long and pure life, swelled her jubilee into a
tribute of the united affection of civilized mankind. Preparations were
made for months beforehand. Representatives from kings and presidents,
as well as from the army and navy of every country in the world, came to
do her homage.
It was not only Queen Victoria's day, it was Great Britain's day. Not
only in London, where the great procession of representatives and
soldiers from all the Colonies marched in honor of the gracious queen,
but the services in honor of the day belted the globe. They began in
the Colonies of New Zealand and Australia; afterward in South Africa;
and so they followed the sun westward. When his light had crossed the
ocean and reached the continent of America, the citizens of St. John's,
Newfoundland, recommenced the anthem which was taken up in succession,
in town after town across the continent through Canada, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. The loyal dwellers at Victoria, British
Columbia, tossed it across the Pacific, and on to India, throughout all
the Colonies of the empire of the Union Jack.
It was a sublime and unparalleled occasion, and yet it is not too much
to say that the most splendid and perhaps the most enduring souvenir of
the Queen's Jubilee was Rudyard Kipling's poem--the _Recessional_. The
editor of the London _Times_, in which journal it was first published,
declares that it is the greatest poem of the century, and it is quite
possible that such may be the verdict of the next generation.
This great poem came at the close of the Jubilee exercises and struck
the world with a surprise. While Mr. Kipling has long been regarded as a
great writer of fiction, and a strong poet, the deep note of strength,
the undertone of volcanic earnestness, as well as the profound religious
faith of the _Recessional_, were qualities which had not been attributed
to Mr. Kipling by the majority of people. Yet, as Dr. George Horr, one
of our brightest editors, has clearly set forth, Kipling, both as
novelist and poet, has always portrayed the manly, strenuous side of
life. He does not falter at putting before us ugly representations of
vice, but beneath all the roughness and viciousness of men whom he
describes, he reveals to us the real bedrock of genuine manliness. He
never seeks to make us admire a cheat, a sneak, or a mountebank of any
kind. Even in his most unconventional stories there is a Puritan strain
in his temper, both in mental and moral quality, which holds him to the
great essential moralities.
It is certainly appropriate that such a man should have eyes to see the
profound religious side of the Queen's Jubilee, for at the bottom,
everything that is real, that is manly and heroic, is also religious. It
is not to be marveled at that this keen student of human nature and of
human history should have been able to perceive that "the far-flung
battle line," "the dominion over palm and pine," "the tumult and the
shouting," "the captains and the kings," and "the far-called navies" are
only dust and ashes, unless God lives in the hearts and controls the
character of those who wield these instruments; and that "the frantic
boast," and "the foolish word" may pull a national structure down upon
the heads of a people drunken with their own power and riches. The
sublime and solemn refrain of the poem,--
[Illustration: _HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT_]
"Lest we forget--lest we forget,"
called back not only the British people in all parts of the world, but
the conscience of all civilization, to the one abiding source of human
power.
The fact that Kipling's poem touched the heart of the English-speaking
world as nothing else connected with the Jubilee did, is, as Doctor Horr
states, "a profound testimony to the existence and dominance of the
religious instinct in the Anglo-Saxon race. We have often been told that
luxury, and pride, and gross materialism, have quenched the Puritan
spirit. We have never believed that, though it has been hard sometimes
to maintain the contrary against almost overwhelming evidence. But under
the breath of a moral issue the smouldering fire has leaped into flame.
The poet who elicits this temper, interprets it to itself, and gives it
form and voice, renders a service to the higher interests of the race
that can hardly be computed. Religion has not lost its hold when such
lines as these are universally recognized as the noblest feature of the
Jubilee:--
"If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not thee in awe;
Such boasting as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!
"For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard--
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And, guarding, calls not thee to guard--
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on thy people, Lord."
Mr Edward Bok, the brilliant editor of the _Ladies' Home Journal_,
secured the service of the celebrated composer Reginald de Koven to
compose suitable music for this poem, and it was published in that
magazine in the issue for May, 1898. De Koven's music promises to be a
great success. On last Memorial Sunday, May 29, the _Recessional_ was
sung to De Koven's music by church choirs in every large town and city
in the United States. Surely nothing could be more appropriate for
Americans to sing at the present time than the _Recessional_. It is a
time when it is important that the citizens of our proud Republic shall
remember that not in her vast territory, or inexhaustible wealth, or in
mighty navy or splendid army, but in the blessing of Almighty God lies
the real strength of a nation. Kipling's august prayer and refrain is as
appropriate for us as for Great Britain:--
"Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget--lest we forget!"
[Illustration: FINIS]
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
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