Immortal Songs of Camp and Field

A delightful contrast to the attack of the mob on the Massachusetts Sixth, in Baltimore, in 1861, was furnished recently when the historic Sixth from Boston passed through Baltimore on their way to the South to take part in the invasion of Cuba. Baltimore gave herself up to seeing how splendidly she could receive the regiment that had once been mobbed in her streets. They were received at the station by the Mayor, the school-children were drawn up in line along the route of march, and the soldiers from Massachusetts were pelted with flowers instead of stones and bullets. Each soldier was given a little box containing cake and fruit, and a love letter, while a great motto met their eyes which said: “Let the welcome of ‘98 efface the memory of ‘61.”

ALL QUIET ALONG THE POTOMAC

“All quiet along the Potomac,” they say,“Except now and then a stray picketIs shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,By a rifleman hid in the thicket.’Tis nothing: a private or two now and thenWill not count in the news of the battle;Not an officer lost, only one of the menMoaning out all alone the death-rattle.”All quiet along the Potomac to-night,Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,Or the light of the watchfires, are gleaming.A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night-windThrough the forest leaves softly is creeping:While stars up above, with their glittering eyes,Keep guard, – for the army is sleeping.There’s only the sound of the lone sentry’s tread,As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,And thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed,Far away in the cot on the mountain.His musket falls slack, his face, dark and grim,Grows gentle with memories tender,As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep;For their mother – may heaven defend her!The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then,That night when the love yet unspokenLeaped up to his lips, when low, murmured vowsWere pledged to be ever unbroken;Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,He dashes off tears that are welling,And gathers his gun closer up to his side,As if to keep down the heart swelling.He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree,The footstep is lagging and weary,Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,Toward the shade of the forest so dreary.Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves,Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?It looked like a rifle – “Ha! Mary, good-bye,”And the lifeblood is ebbing and plashing.All quiet along the Potomac to-night,No sound save the rush of the river;While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead,The picket’s off duty forever.Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves,Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?It looked like a rifle – “Ha! Mary, good-bye,”And the lifeblood is ebbing and plashing.– Ethel Lynn Beers.

Mrs. Beers’s right to the authorship of this famous song has been very severely contested, but there seems to be no reason now to doubt that the really fine poem is hers. Though there have been numerous claimants for its authorship, the one who has come nearest to carrying the day is, strange to say, a Southerner. It is curious indeed that a war song should be claimed by both sides, but that has been the story of this song. This Southerner is Lamar Fontaine. Mr. Fontaine was born at Gay Hill, Texas. Twenty years before the war his father moved to Austin, Texas, and was secretary to General Lamar, for whom the son was named. When the war broke out this young Lamar Fontaine became a major in the Confederate Army. Some time in 1862, when the poem All Quiet Along the Potomac appeared in a Southern newspaper, Lamar Fontaine’s name was attached to it. Davidson, the author of Living Writers of the South, wrote to Fontaine in regard to the authorship of this hymn, and in replying Fontaine said: “The poem in question was written by me while our army lay at Fairfax Courthouse, or rather the greater portion, in and around that place. On the second day of August, 1861, I first read it to a few of my messmates in Company I, Second Virginia Cavalry. During the month of August I gave away many manuscript copies to soldiers, and some few to ladies in and about Leesburg, Loudon County, Virginia. In fact, I think that most of the men belonging to the Second Virginia, then commanded by Colonel Radford, were aware of the fact that I was the author of it. I never saw the piece in print until just before the battle of Leesburg (October 21, 1861), and then it was in a Northern paper with the notice that it had been found on the dead body of a picket. I hope the controversy between myself and others in regard to All Quiet Along the Potomac To-night, will soon be forever settled. I wrote it, and the world knows it; and they may howl over it, and give it to as many authors as they please. I wrote it, and I am a Southern man, and I am proud of the title, and am glad that my children will know that the South was the birthplace of their fathers, from their generation back to the seventh.”

Another Southern man, however, and a distinguished one, puts a very different look on the case. Mr. Chandler Harris of Georgia writes a letter for insertion in Mr. Davidson’s volume in the course of which he says: “After a careful and impartial investigation of all the facts in my reach, I have come to the conclusion that Mrs. Beers, and not Mr. Fontaine, wrote the poem in question. My reasons for believing that Mr. Fontaine is not the author of All Quiet, are several:

“1. The poem appeared in Harper’s Weekly for November 30, 1861, as The Picket Guard, over the initials of Mrs. Ethel Beers of New York.

“2. It did not make its appearance in any Southern paper until about April or May, 1862.

“3. It was published as having been found in the pocket of a dead soldier on the battlefield. It is more than probable that the dead soldier was a Federal, and that the poem had been clipped from Harper’s.

“4. I have compared the poem in Harper’s with the same as it first appeared in the Southern papers, and find the punctuation to be precisely the same.

“5. Mr. Fontaine, so far as I have seen, has given elsewhere no evidence of the powers displayed in that poem. I, however, remember noticing in the Charleston Courier, in 1863, or 1864, a ‘Parodie’ (as Mr. L. F. had it) on Mrs. Norton’s Bingen on the Rhine, which was positively the poorest affair I ever saw. Mr. Fontaine had just come out of a Federal prison, and some irresponsible editor, in speaking of this ‘Parodie’ remarked that the poet’s Pegasus had probably worn his wings out against the walls of his Northern dungeon.

“You probably know me well enough to acquit me, in this instance at least, of the charge of prejudice. I am jealous of Southern literature, and if I have any partiality in the matter at all, it is in favor of Major Lamar Fontaine’s claim. I should like to claim this poem for that gentleman; I should be glad to claim it as a specimen of Southern literature, but the facts in the case do not warrant it.”

Mr. Alfred H. Guernsey, for many years editor of Harper’s Magazine, bears testimony that the poem, bearing the title The Picket Guard, appeared in Harper’s Weekly for November 30, 1861. He further declares that it was furnished by Mrs. Ethel Lynn Beers, whom he describes as “a lady whom I think incapable of palming off as her own any production of another.”

Mrs. Beers was born in Goshen, New York, and her maiden name was Ethelinda Eliot. She was a direct descendant of John Eliot, the heroic apostle to the Indians. When she began to write for the newspapers she signed her contributions “Ethel Lynn,” a nom de plume very naturally suggested by her Christian name. After her marriage, she added her husband’s name, and over the signature of Ethel Lynn Beers published many poems. In her later years Mrs. Beers resided in Orange, New Jersey, where she died October 10, 1879, on the very day on which her poems, among them All Quiet Along the Potomac, were issued in book form.

There has never been any contest as to the music of the song, which was composed by J. Dayton, the leader of the band of the First Connecticut Artillery.

THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME

Way down upon de Suwanee ribber,Far, far away,Dere’s wha my heart is turning ebber,Dere’s wha de old folks stay.All up and down de whole creation,Sadly I roam,Still longin’ for de old plantation,And for de old folks at home.All de world am sad and dreary,Eb’rywhere I roam.Oh! darkies, how my heart grows weary,Far from de old folks at home.All round de little farm I wander’dWhen I was young,Den many happy days I squander’d,Many de songs I sung.When I was playin’ wid my brudder,Happy was I,Oh! take me to my kind old mudder,Dere let me live and die.One little hut among de bushes,One dat I love,Still sadly to my mem’ry rushes,No matter where I rove.When will I see de bees a-hummingAll round de comb?When will I hear de banjo tummingDown in my good old home?– Stephen Collins Foster.

Stephen Collins Foster has a very tender place in the hearts of the American people. His songs are marked by a tenderness and pathos which goes straight to the fountain of tears. Foster was born on the 4th of July, 1826, at Lawrenceburg, Pennsylvania. His native town was founded by his father, but was many years ago merged into the city of Pittsburg.

Young Foster had good opportunities for education in an academy at Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and afterward at Jefferson College. He had a genius for music almost from his birth; while yet but a baby he could wake sweet harmonies from any musical instrument he touched. At the age of seven he had mastered the flageolet without a teacher, and had already become quite proficient on the piano and the flute. He had a clear though not a very strong voice, but one that was under perfect control. As a lad he wrote his first composition, a waltz, which was rendered at a school commencement. The composition, coming from so young a boy, attracted a good deal of attention. His talent for music was so marked that he became the leader throughout his school days of all musical affairs among the students, and he was the center of every serenading party or concert. To compose the words and music of a song was his chief delight. He wrote the words first, and then hummed them over and over till he found notes that would express them properly. While he was in the academy a minstrel troupe came to town and he attended their performance. He succeeded in having one of his songs introduced into their program the next night, which greatly pleased the local public. This was Oh, Susanna, which was afterward published in 1842, and immediately gained great popularity. This aroused his musical enthusiasm, and he offered still other songs to publishers, and finally determined to devote himself to musical composition for a livelihood. He attended all the negro camp meetings he could reach, listened to the songs of colored people, gathering new ideas, and this faithful reproduction of what was up to that time an undiscovered mine of musical possibilities, was the secret of his great success as a writer of negro melodies.

Foster had a deeply poetic soul, and would go into the wildest ecstasy over a pretty melody or a bit of rich harmony. There is a certain vein of tender retrospect in nearly all his songs. Take Old Dog Tray, of which a hundred and twenty-five thousand copies were sold the first eighteen months after publication. There is something exceedingly tender about it: —

“The morn of life is past, and ev’ning comes at last,It brings me a dream of a once happy day,Of merry forms I’ve seen upon the village green,Sporting with my old dog Tray.Old dog Tray’s ever faithful,Grief cannot drive him away,He’s gentle, he is kind; I’ll never, never findA better friend than Old Dog Tray!”

How often we say one to another, “It is good to be missed.” But no one has ever voiced that universal feeling of the heart as perfectly as has Foster in his popular song, Do They Miss Me at Home?

“Do they miss me at home, do they miss me?’Twould be an assurance most dear,To know that this moment some lov’d oneWere saying, ‘I wish he were here’;To feel that the group at the firesideWere thinking of me as I roam;Oh, yes, ’twould be joy beyond measureTo know that they miss me at home.”

Foster was a most prolific writer, producing between two and three hundred popular songs, furnishing both the words and the music. Among his best known war songs are We’ve a Million in the Field, Stand by the Flag, For the Dear Old Flag I Die, and Was my Brother in the Battle? His most famous song, however, and one which he hoped would rival Home, Sweet Home, – a song of which the soldiers amid the loneliness and homesickness of camp never grew weary – was The Old Folks at Home. For the time it has been before the public, it is probably the best known song in the world. Four hundred thousand copies of it were sold the first few years after it was written. The tune has crossed all oceans and become a favorite with martial bands of music in every region of the earth.

The author of this sweet old melody that touches the heart of all peoples closed his life in great sorrow and poverty. In the days of his youth and early manhood he was greatly beloved by all who knew him. He had multitudes of friends and in character was modest, unassuming, and almost as shy as a girl. He was happily married in 1854, in Pittsburg, but the bright prospects which he then had of a happy home life were eclipsed through his yielding to the appetite for strong drink. In 1860 his dissipation separated him from his family, and he settled in New York City, where for awhile he kept an old down-town grocery on the corner of Hester and Christy Streets. Some of his most famous songs were composed in the back room of that old grocery on pieces of brown wrapping-paper. Many of these songs that under the impelling force of his appetite for drink were sold for a few dollars, often brought hundreds and even thousands of dollars to the purchasers.

On the 12th of January, 1864, he was injured by a fall, and died on the following day in Bellevue Hospital, friendless, and in abject poverty. This brilliant man whose melodies were sung by hundreds and thousands of tongues, and to whom a single publisher had paid more than twenty thousand dollars of royalties on his music, died lonely in a great city, and his body was carried back to his native State through the charity of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. His funeral, however, was attended by an immense concourse of people, comprising both the rich and poor of Pittsburg who remembered his brighter days, and who felt that the city was honored by his genius. Musicians attended in large force, and the songs they sang above his grave were his own melodies.

THE BLUE AND THE GRAY

By the flow of the inland river,Whence the fleets of iron have fled,Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,Asleep are the ranks of the dead;Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;Under the one the Blue;Under the other the Gray.These, in the robings of glory;Those, in the gloom of defeat;All, with the battle-blood gory,In the dusk of eternity meet;Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;Under the laurel, the Blue;Under the willow, the Gray.From the silence of sorrowful hoursThe desolate mourners go,Lovingly laden with flowersAlike for the friend and foe;Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;Under the roses, the Blue;Under the lilies, the Gray.So, with an equal splendor,The morning sun-rays fall,With a touch impartially tender,On the blossoms blooming for all;Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;Broidered with gold, the Blue;Mellowed with gold, the Gray.So when the summer callethOn forest and field of grain,With an equal murmur fallethThe cooling drip of the rain;Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;Wet with the rain, the Blue;Wet with the rain, the Gray.Sadly, but not with upbraiding,The generous deed was done;In the storm of the years that are fading,No braver battle was won;Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;Under the blossoms, the Blue;Under the garlands, the Gray.No more shall the war cry sever,Or the winding rivers be red;They banish our anger forever,When they laurel the graves of our dead!Under the sod and the dewWaiting the judgment day;Love and tears for the Blue;Tears and love for the Gray.– Francis Miles Finch.

Francis Miles Finch, the author of The Blue and the Gray, was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1827. He graduated with honor from Yale College in 1845 in his eighteenth year. He studied law and became a practicing lawyer of fine reputation at Ithaca, being elected an associate judge of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York in 1881. In July, 1853, he read a poem at the centennial celebration of the Linonian Society of Yale, in which several lyrics were introduced, including one on Nathan Hale, the patriot spy of the Revolution. This at once achieved wide popularity. His one poem, however, which will carry his name down to the future is The Blue and the Gray.

Two years after the war of the Rebellion there appeared in the New York Tribune, the following item: “The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler sentiments than many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers.” This, coming at a time when a great deal of the soreness of defeat and the bitterness aroused by the war still remained, seemed to be the first indication of an era of more kindly feeling and a more generous Christian spirit.

The eye of a poet is always seeing the poetic possibilities in current incidents, and when Mr. Finch saw this news item in his favorite daily paper, he not only saw the romance and pathos of the situation, but thought that such an exhibition of generosity should be at once met and welcomed in the same temper. It was out of that impulse that The Blue and the Gray grew into being. Mr. Finch sent it to the Atlantic Monthly, where it was published in the September number of 1867, prefaced with the news extract from the Tribune which had suggested it. The poem at once aroused marked attention and became popular throughout the entire country, but especially so in the South.

John Hutchinson was paying a visit to Vinnie Ream, the sculptor, who designed the General Thomas monument in April, 1874. Among the guests were three ex-Confederate generals. At her request Hutchinson sang The Blue and the Gray; when he had finished singing the song, the three Confederates rose simultaneously, and one after the other shook his hand with great heartiness. “Mr. Hutchinson,” they said, “that song is a passport to you anywhere in the South.” Alexander H. Stephens, the ex-vice-president of the Confederacy, upon hearing from these gentlemen of Mr. Hutchinson’s singing, sent a special request to him to come to his hotel and sing The Blue and the Gray. He was wheeled into the room in his chair to listen to the song. At the conclusion he declared that the country was safe when such sentiments became popular.

Mr. Hutchinson himself composed the music for Finch’s famous song. At the great Atlanta Exposition in 1895, Mr. Hutchinson made the journey to Atlanta by special invitation of the management, and was present on “Blue and Gray” Day. He says of the experience: “Who can picture my thoughts on that notable occasion? To think that, at last, the man who had known what it was to be maligned and buffeted in the South, should be received with honor in its chief city, and witness the effects of reconstruction in the great cotton country! It was a ‘New South,’ indeed, that I saw. And there, to the great gathering of Union and Confederate soldiers, I sang the song that had so often in later years been a key to open the Southern heart to the Hutchinsons: —

“‘No more shall the war cry sever,Or the winding rivers be red;They banish our anger forever,When they laurel the graves of our dead!Under the sod and the dew,Waiting the judgment day;Love and tears for the Blue;Tears and love for the Gray.’”

Perhaps no one thing has done so much to soften the bitterness which civil war left in our country as the beautiful ceremonies connected with Memorial Day. As the years have gone on, and every Memorial Day the Southern soldiers have been more and more wont to cover the graves of their dead foemen with wreaths of Southern flowers, and again and again gray-haired veterans from both the “Blue and the Gray” have met beside the Hudson to do honor to the great commander who at Appomattox said, “Let us have peace,” the coldness of suspicion and distrust have blown away, until, now that the boys from the South as well as from the North have marched together again under the old flag to fight a foreign foe, we see eye to eye.

The birth of Decoration Day deserves to be held in everlasting remembrance. Mrs. John A. Logan, the wife of the great Volunteer General, in company with some friends, made a trip to Richmond in March, 1868. Mrs. Logan was particularly impressed by the evidences of desolation and destruction which she witnessed everywhere, but which seemed to her to be particularly emphasized by the innumerable graves which filled the cemeteries, many of which were those of Confederate soldiers. In the summer before they had all been decorated by wreaths of flowers and little flags, all of which were faded, but which seemed to the tender-hearted woman to be a mute evidence of the devotion and gratitude of those people to the men who had lost their lives to their cause.

On speaking of this to General Logan, on her return, he said it was a beautiful custom and one worthy to be copied, and, as he was then Commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, that he intended issuing an order, asking the entire people of the nation to inaugurate the custom of annually decorating the graves of the patriotic dead as a memorial of their sacrifice and devotion to country. He issued the first order for May 30, 1868, and it was so enthusiastically received that Congress made it a national holiday.

It will thus be seen, that Memorial Day was born out of a partnership between a woman’s tender heart and a man’s noble purpose. It is also sweet to reflect that South and North united at its birth. The Southern mourners were the first to cover the graves of their dead with flowers, as they were the first to decorate the graves of their fallen foes; while their Northern brothers led in calling to it national attention, and made the custom as wide as the country. From henceforth we all unite in the closing couplet of Finch’s noble song: —

“Love and tears for the Blue;Tears and love for the Gray.”

RULE, BRITANNIA

When Britain first, at heaven’s command,Arose from out the azure main,This was the charter, the charter of the land,And guardian angels sung the strain:Rule, Britannia,Britannia rule the waves,Britons never shall be slaves.The nations, not so blest as thee,Must in their turn to tyrants fall,While thou shalt flourish, great and free,The dread and envy of them all.Rule, Britannia,Britannia rule the waves,Britons never shall be slaves.Still more majestic shalt thou rise,More dreadful from each foreign stroke;As the loud blast that rends the skiesServes but to root thy native oak.Rule, Britannia,Britannia rule the waves,Britons never shall be slaves.Thee, haughty tyrants ne’er shall tame;All their attempts to bend thee downWill but arouse thy generous flame, —But work their woe and thy renown.Rule, Britannia,Britannia rule the waves,Britons never shall be slaves.To thee belongs the rural reign,Thy cities shall with commerce shine;All thine shall be the subject main,And every shore encircles thine.Rule, Britannia,Britannia rule the waves,Britons never shall be slaves.The Muses, still with freedom found,Shall to thy happy coasts repair,Blessed Isle! With matchless beauty crowned,And manly hearts to guard the fair.Rule, Britannia,Britannia rule the waves,Britons never shall be slaves.– James Thomson.

The poet Southey declares that this noble ode in honor of Great Britain will be the political hymn of that country as long as she maintains her political power. It had a peculiar origin. Dr. Thomas Arne, the great musical composer, composed the music for his Masque of Alfred, and it was first performed at Cliefden House, near Maidenhead, on August 1, 1740. Cliefden was then the residence of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the occasion was to commemorate the accession of George I. and in honor of the birthday of young Princess Augusta. Doctor Arne afterward altered it into an opera, and it was so performed at Drury Lane Theater on March 20, 1745, for the benefit of Mrs. Arne. In the advertisement of that performance Doctor Arne specially announces that Rule Britannia, which he calls “a celebrated ode,” will be sung. We judge from this that it had even at that time gained great popularity.