Both Yankees and Rebels found regimental bands mandatory to sustain the rage militaire and often paid for them out of their own funds. Military heroes were championed in tunes such as “Stonewall Jackson’s Way” or “Beauregard’s Charleston.” “Marching Along” praised General George McClellan and his army while Henry Clay Work’s “Marching Through Georgia” encouraged northerners to persevere as the war’s end seemed near. Other songs taught Americans the strategic importance of Cairo, Illinois, or the superiority of the Enfield rifle. “The First Gun Is Fired” explained the significance of Fort Sumter. Songs often appeared after major battles that helped describe the combat to interested civilians. For soldiers, music made them march faster, endure hardship longer, fight better, and remember their homes and their humanity. Each side ridiculed its opponents musically both publically and privately. Music helped both northerners and southerners attempt to make sense of the madness unleashed by war.Īs the war continued, “songs became weapons in a persistent and occasionally intense cultural war” (104). Confederates also saw the significance of music for home-front and battlefield morale and embraced “Dixie,” altering it over 24 different times from its 1860 inception, “Bonnie Blue Flag,” and “Maryland, My Maryland.” Songs in both North and South addressed new roles for women, new respect for immigrants, the economy, conscription, the ineptness of military and civilian leaders, and the brutality of war. “John Brown’s Body,” Julia Ward Howe’s new text for “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Battle Cry of Freedom,” and “We Are Coming Father Abraham” grew increasingly important to bolster northern morale. He masterfully deconstructs lyrics to help us see why the Civil War was “a war with a musical sound track” (1).Īs the war began, tunes like “Yankee Doodle,” “Hail Columbia,” and “America” were embraced by the North but rejected by the South. In Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War, Christian McWhirter analyzes the role music played in dividing the nation in 1860-1861, in sustaining civilian and military morale in the bloody cataclysm of war, and in formulating meanings of the war after Appomattox. ![]() University of North Carolina Press, 2012. ![]() Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War by Christian McWhirter.
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