Lyrics were added to “John Brown’s Body” during the course of the war, and in 1862 Northern poet Julia Ward Howe wrote a new title and entirely new set of words for the song, but, contrary to popular belief, her “Battle Hymn of the Republic” did not achieve widespread popularity until the war was over.Ģ.
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Over time, however, the singing of the song itself led to changes in opinion, and by the time that Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation transformed the war into a crusade to free the slaves, the hearts of the fighting men had been prepared. Union soldiers throughout the country embraced it by the spring of 1862 and often sung it to irritate Southern soldiers and civilians, even if they themselves were lukewarm about abolition. Originating in 1861 as a camp song meant to tease a soldier named John Brown, it was transformed into an anthem honoring the memory of the fiery abolitionist. Few Union soldiers who marched south in 1861 would have done so had they had any inkling that they were fighting to free the black man. Abolitionists were generally seen as fanatics and kooks-after all, their idea of political action included things like holding meetings during which they burned copies of the Constitution-and before Fort Sumter, John Brown himself was viewed as a wild-eyed, murderous ruffian who well-deserved his execution by Virginia authorities in 1859.
At the war’s outset, Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party were careful to frame the conflict as a war to preserve the Union, as the vast majority of Yankees held what we would today call “racist” views of Africans (and other darker-skinned peoples). One of the most difficult developments for historians of the Civil War to explain was the widespread adoption of the abolitionist agenda by Northerners mid-way through the war. It was easily the most popular song among Yankee soldiers during the entire war, showing the power of music, when combined with words, to influence belief. “John Brown’s Body” (words by various authors music from the hymn “Say Brothers Will You Meet Us on Canaan’s Happy Shore”) The performances below have been chosen carefully, offering, in this writer’s opinion, the best readily available online.ġ. (“Dixie,” which originated in the the 1850s and which was published in 1859, is thus not included here.) These songs were subjected to various arrangements both during and after the war, and their character and quality depend heavily on both the skill of the arranger and the performers. As in the cases of the men they missed, families found in music of the era a balm for their aching souls, which longed for the safe return of their fathers, sons, and brothers, and an end to the fratricidal conflict.īelow are ten of the greatest and most popular songs that were written during the secession crisis and the Civil War. The armies themselves served to advertise new songs to civilians, carrying this music with them as they marched across the land and holding concerts for civilians along the way.
During the war, Northern presses published some 9,000-10,000 songs, and Southern ones between 600-700. Thousands of new songs about the conflict were written by scores of composers between 18, and sheet music for newly-minted pieces was made readily available at affordable prices by publishers.
In an era when pianos were affordable to most middle-class homes-a new one could be purchased for as little as $125 and used ones for less-music filled the living rooms of houses on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Music was equally important on the homefront. Far from their homes, music provided a diversion from both loneliness and terror on the march and in battle, it infused the men with a spirit of élan and commitment to their cause. In the camps of both North and South, regimental bands regularly inspired, amused, and consoled soldiers, who on a daily basis faced the threat of death, both from the mysterious onslaught of disease, borne by bugs they could not see, and from the bullets and cannon-shot of the enemy, whom they saw all too clearly in the close-quarter combat of the era. It would be hard to overestimate the ubiquity and importance of music during the American Civil War. “If we’d had your music, sir, we’d have whipped you out of your boots.” - A Confederate officer at Appomattox to his Union counterpart “I don’t believe we can have an army without music.” -Robert E.
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