Immortal Songs of Camp and Field / The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking Anecdotes connected with their History

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,—

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,—

These lines are supposed to have been an imitation of the doggerel,—

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

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,—

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,—

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.”

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.”

DANIEL DECATUR EMMETT

PICKING COTTON

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?”

“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,

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.”

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,—

ALBERT PIKE

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

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.

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.

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.”