Immortal Songs of Camp and Field

“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!”

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 reckonsEach 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,I spec he try an’ fool dem YankeesFor to t’ink he’s contraband.“De darkies feel so lonesomeLibing 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 awayIn 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!”

TENTING ON THE OLD CAMP GROUND

We’re tenting to-night on the old camp ground;Give us a song to cheerOur 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 homesOthers 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.”

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 cheerOur 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.’”

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.

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.

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 neverPress 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 bannerTill in honor I can come.Tell the traitors all around youThat their cruel words, we know,In ev’ry battle kill our soldiersBy 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 flagWe 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 dayThat 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.