Immortal Songs of Camp and Field

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 battleI am lying, mother dear,With my wounded comrades waitingFor 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.”

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 countryEver 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 lyingOn the battle plain,Lonely, wounded, even dying,Calling, but in vain.If amid the din of battleNobly you should fall,Far away from those who love you,None to hear you call —Who would whisper words of comfortWho 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 seeHow 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 singAre 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 soldierHe obeyed our country’s call;Vowing to protect its bannerOr 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, —

“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 trulyWho 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 curlingRound 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 overWe 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 lookingOn her placid face,Then our tho’ts will meet together,In a heav’nly place.“When the bullet, swiftly flyingThro’ 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.”

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.”

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 mountainThat 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 darknessThat 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 brighterWhen Sherman marched down to the sea!“Then cheer upon cheer for bold ShermanWent up from each valley and glen,And the bugles reëchoed the musicThat came from the lips of the men;For we knew that the stars in our bannerMore 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 bannersSwept out from Atlanta’s grim walls,And the blood of the patriot dampenedThe 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 laurelAs 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 brighterWhen Sherman camped down by the sea!”

MY MARYLAND

The despot’s heel is on thy shore,Maryland!His torch is at thy temple door,Maryland!Avenge the patriotic goreThat 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 refrainThat 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 throngStalking 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.”

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 seamsWith 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.”