'-v v-: : - :V:^;' . 
 
 STORIES OF 
 
 AT NATIONAL SONGS 
 
 OL. NICHOLAS SMITH 
 
 ' ..'' '
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES

 
 
 To 
 
 The Wife of My Youth 
 
 Whose Devotion and Encouragement 
 
 Have Been o Constant Benediction, 
 
 This Volume is 
 
 Lovingly Dedicated. 

 
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. 
 
 THE author takes pleasure in expressing his indebted- 
 ness to the John Church Company of Cincinnati, for 
 the use of the excellent portrait of Dr. George F. 
 Root, and the words of two of his war songs; to that com- 
 prehensive and valuable work, "Our War Songs, North and 
 South," published by S. Brainard's Sons, Cleveland, for the 
 words of several songs and the portrait of Charles C. 
 Sawyer; to Champlin's monumental "Cyclopedia of Music 
 and Musicians," published by Charles Scribner's Sons, for 
 the portrait of Rouget de Lisle; to J. F. Kreh of Frederick, 
 Md., for the beautiful illustration of Key's monument; and 
 to Admiral Preble's "The Flags of the United States," pub- 
 lished by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., for the illustration in 
 which Judge Hopkinson's portrait appears.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Illustrations of the Power of Song 9 
 
 The First American National Air "Yankee 
 
 Doodle." 23 
 
 Billings The First American War Song Writer. 33 
 The First Original American Song " Hail 
 
 Columbia." 39 
 
 "The Star Spangled Banner." 44 
 
 My Country, 'tis of Thee 56 
 
 Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean 72 
 
 The Fatherless Song of John Brown's Body. . . 77 
 
 George F. Root and His Battle Cry of Freedom. . 93 
 
 The Battle Hymn of the Republic 108 
 
 We Are Coming, Father Abraham 121 
 
 A Trio of Good War Songs 127 
 
 Marching Through Georgia 13G 
 
 Old Shady The Famous Singing Cook 149 
 
 Tenting on the Old Camp Ground 153 
 
 Songs of Cheer and Pathos 157 
 
 Home, Sweet Home 164 
 
 Songs of the South Dixie 178 
 
 Maryland, My Maryland 193 
 
 The Bonnie Blue Flag 201 
 
 Great Britain's National Anthem 207 
 
 The Marseillaise 217 
 
 Battle Hymns of Germany 227 
 
 General Index 235
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Alexander C. Ross 17 
 
 Yankee Doodle 23 
 
 Joseph Hopkinson 39 
 
 Francis Scott Key 44 
 
 The Key Monument 51 
 
 Samuel F. Smith 50 
 
 John Brown 77 
 
 George F. Root 93 
 
 Jules Lumbard lOti 
 
 Julia Ward Howe 108 
 
 Henry C. Work 136 
 
 Old Shady 149 
 
 Walter Kittredge 153 
 
 Charles Carroll Sawyer ]59 
 
 John Howard Payne 104 
 
 Daniel D. Emmett 178 
 
 James R. Randall 193 
 
 Henry Carey 207 
 
 Rouget de Lisle 217 
 
 Max Schneckenburger 226
 
 STOR.IES OF 
 
 Great national Songs 
 
 T 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POWER OF SOXG. 
 
 WO hundred years ago, Andrew Fletcher, of ^ 
 Salton, the noted Scottish patriot, said : "I ^f 
 knew a very wise man, so much of Sir * 
 
 Christopher's sentiment, that he believed if a man 
 were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not 
 care who should make the laws of a nation." A 
 writer of unknown name, in commenting on this 
 famous, but usually misquoted saying, suggests 
 that the wise man did not mean to disparage 
 statesmanship, but to emphasize the fact that 
 songs accepted by the people as expressions of na- 
 tional sentiment have a far greater influence than 
 the statutes enacted to carry out given political 
 doctrines and purposes.
 
 10 STOEIES OF GEEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 It is easy to trace through the history of civili- 
 zation the subtle force of popular melodies repre- 
 senting thoughts and emotions that have prevailed 
 from time to time, and helped to shape the course 
 of events. There seems to be something in human 
 nature which demands a musical outlet for certain 
 forms of patriotic and religious feeling. "And all 
 countries have their favorite and characteristic 
 songs, corresponding to the temperament and ten- 
 dency of their respective peoples. There has 
 never been a country on earth so poor that it did 
 not have at least one simple ballad, dear to the 
 common heart, and serving as a source of inspira- 
 tion in time of peril." 
 
 There is no higher human power than music. 
 It will move men's souls when the mightiest of 
 orators fail. A few years ago some one watched 
 the most noted infidel in the world, Colonel Robert 
 G. Ingersoll, as he listened to that great master, 
 Remenyi, drawing his wondrous bow upon his vio- 
 lin. Those marvelous strains soon touched the over- 
 flowing heart of the famous agnostic, and as 
 the big tears fell "from the eye that had so 
 often flashed with scorn," everybody present 
 felt as never before, the striking wonder of the 
 pathos, beauty and power of music. There is 
 something like a divine influence in music, and
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POWER OF SONG. 11 
 
 that explains why birds of prey never sing, and 
 infidelity has no song. 
 
 Mr. Henry T. Finck, in an article on "The 
 Utility of Music," printed in a recent number of 
 The Forum, speaks about music superseding the 
 chime bells in calling people to worship. In some 
 parts of Germany, especially at Stuttgart, they 
 have a more delightful and effective way of draw- 
 ing people to church than by the clanking of the 
 bells. Three or four trombone-players enter the 
 church tower a short time before the hour of ser- 
 vice and play a solemn choral so sweetly that the 
 charm and purifying joy in the majestic harmo- 
 nies wafting in the air, are not wasted on dull 
 ears, but impress passers-by with the fact that 
 Sunday is not as a sponge with which to wipe out 
 the follies of the week, but a day of worship, and 
 many hundreds are drawn to the service who 
 would otherwise pass by the church door. 
 
 Music has had more to do in soothing the 
 stormy and bitter passions of mankind, in elevat- 
 ing their thoughts, in exciting their sympathies, 
 than any other agency of man's invention ; and 
 how many times "the contrary stream of thought, 
 and opinion, and feeling, and impulse, have been 
 united by song in an ocean of good will and mutual 
 helpfulness."
 
 12 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 The greatest intellects are those that can inter- 
 pret and reveal man's own soul; and herein lies 
 the power of the world's great poets and musicians. 
 An incident which illustrates how quickly the 
 human heart responds to genuine soul song, is a 
 touching scene in the life of Jenny Lind. The 
 sweet singer of Sweden, whose smile, as well as 
 voice, was the most heavenly ever given to woman, 
 was, at the height of her renown, singing in Lon- 
 don. Giulia Grisi, Italy's "singing flower of 
 beauty," was also in London winning much popu- 
 lar applause. Both were invited to sing the same 
 night at a court concert before the Queen. Jenny 
 Lind being the younger, sang first, and was so dis- 
 turbed by the fierce, scornful look of Grisi, that she 
 was at the point of failure, when suddenly an in- 
 spiration came to her. The accompanist was strik- 
 ing his final chords. She asked him to rise, and 
 taking the vacant seat, her fingers wandered 
 over the keys in a loving prelude, and then she 
 sang a little prayer which she had loved as a child. 
 She had not sung it for years. As she sang she 
 was no longer in the presence of royalty, but sing- 
 ing to loving friends in her fatherland. 
 
 Softly at first the plaintive notes floated on the 
 air, swelling louder and richer every moment. The 
 singer seemed to throw her whole soul into that
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POWER OF SONG. 13 
 
 weird, thrilling, plaintive "prayer." Gradually 
 the song died away and ended in a sob. There 
 was silence the silence of admiring wonder. The 
 audience sat spellbound. Jenny Lind lifted her 
 sweet eyes to look into the scornful face that had 
 so disconcerted her. There was no fierce expres- 
 sion now ; instead, a teardrop glistened on the 
 long, black lashes, and after a moment, with the 
 impulsiveness of a child of the tropics, Grisi 
 crossed to Jenny Lind's side, placed her arm about 
 her and kissed her, utterly regardless of the 
 audience. 
 
 By the power and influence of their songs men 
 and women have made possible the mightiest 
 evangelistic movements of the centuries. They 
 have revolutionized parties, and have changed the 
 history of nations. The importance of songs and 
 ballads in effecting great changes in national life, 
 whether reformatory, revolutionary, or religious, 
 is shown in the history of almost every country on 
 the globe. 
 
 Sir George Grove, in his Dictionary of Music, 
 gives an interesting account of the Italian song, 
 "Daghela avanti un Passo," which means, "Move a 
 step forward." It is a striking exemplification of 
 the tremendous power of popular song. In 1858 
 Milan was a hotbed of Italian conspiracy and in-
 
 14 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 trigue against the Austrian rule in Lombardy. At 
 the Teatro della Cannobiana a ballet dancer was 
 received by the spectators with mingled applause 
 and hisses. This gave rise to disorder ; the police 
 interfered and took the part of the majority, who 
 were averse to the dancer. At once the popular 
 sympathies were enlisted in her favor, and her 
 cause was henceforth identified with patriotic 
 aspirations. 
 
 Further disturbances followed and the run of 
 the ballet was stopped, but the tune to which the 
 ballet girl danced her passo, a solo, passed into the 
 streets of Milan and was heard everywhere. The 
 words, partly Italian, partly Milanese, were a 
 hybrid melange of love and war, with the refrain, 
 "Daghela avanti un passo." This was received 
 by the public as an exhortation to patriotic action, 
 while by the Austrians both tune and words were 
 deemed an insolent challenge and were not for- 
 gotten a few months later when war was declared 
 between Austria and the Kingdom of Piedmont. 
 "Daghela avanti" was then played in derision by 
 the Austrian military bands as they advanced into 
 Piedmont, just as "Yankee Doodle" was played 
 by the British bands in ridicule of the American 
 colonists during the French and Indian war pre- 
 vious to the Revolution. But Austria was soou
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POWER OF SONG. 15 
 
 obliged to evacuate Piedmont, and her retreating 
 armies heard the same strains sung by the advanc- 
 ing soldiers of Italy. Province after province was 
 annexed to Piedmont, and with each successive 
 annexation the popularity of this strange song in- 
 creased until it was heard all over Italy. 
 
 Probably no other song, not patriotic or relig- 
 ious, ever had a more marvelous career than 
 Thomas Hood's "Song of the Shirt," written in 
 1843. In its power to touch the emotions and 
 arouse men to action, it counted for more than all 
 else Hood ever wrote. It not only "ran through 
 the land like wildfire," but in the great strikes that 
 seemed to shake England to her center, it had an 
 incomparable controlling influence. It became so 
 popular that it was translated into German, 
 French and Italian. It was printed on cotton 
 handkerchiefs by the hundreds of thousands, and 
 was parodied times without number. That which 
 touched Tom Hood most deeply, because he never 
 thought the song was very remarkable, was that 
 the poor men and women and boys and girls, whose 
 sorrows and sufferings were many, seemed the hap- 
 pier when going about the street singing the "Song 
 of the Shirt" to a rude melody of their own com- 
 position. 
 
 It is said there would be no difficulty in put-
 
 16 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 ting together the history of England in its boldest 
 outlines from the songs inspired by the great crises 
 through which the nation has passed. The songs 
 of the civil war of that country were a series of 
 political ballads which, for personality and power, 
 still remain unrivalled. It was a war whose fierce- 
 ness was as much due to song as to the sword ; and 
 history tells us that song, perhaps more than any 
 other outside influence, brought the head of 
 Charles I. to the block. We are told that "the 
 musicians who led Napoleon's old guard to doom 
 and destruction on the last day at Waterloo, will 
 possibly have to answer for more reckless murders 
 when the record of bloody deeds are read beyond 
 the stars, than any of the generals who exchanged 
 the compliments of the season on that historic occa- 
 sion, for it is said somewhere in history that when 
 the greatest general the world ever saw gave up 
 in doubt and discouragement on that day, the 
 'band played on.' ' Men eagerly marched to the 
 field of slaughter by the impelling strains of the 
 "Marseillaise." 
 
 One of the most interesting and remarkable 
 events ever known in the history of our government 
 showing the power of a simple song, was the great 
 political storm which swept over this country in 
 1 S40. In that year there lived at Zanesville, Ohio,
 
 ALEXANDER C. ROSS, 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS "TIITECAXOE AND TYLER TOO.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POWER OF SONG. 17 
 
 a young business man, Alex. C. Ross by name, who 
 was fuller of Whig enthusiasm than of fine 
 poetry; and one Sunday morning, very early in 
 the famous campaign, while sitting in the church 
 choir, Mr. Ross' feelings found expression in those 
 easy-going and catchy words, "Tippecanoe and 
 Tyler Too," adapted to the tune of "Little Pigs ;" 
 and in a month the song seemed to have traversed 
 the Union. Steady-going merchants, sober-minded 
 business men, lawyers and doctors, and statesmen 
 and ministers, joined with wonderful enthusiasm 
 in the log-cabin and hard-cider music ; and it is a 
 bold fact that in that campaign a president of the 
 United States was sung into the White House by 
 the chorus of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too;" the 
 song exerting an influence entirely beyond the 
 reach of speeches and newspapers. 
 
 Song writers are political, social and religious 
 reformers. They have stirred mankind profoundly 
 by the sweeping, conquering inspiration of their 
 songs, ballads and hymns. These products of the 
 heart a source whence come all great songs are 
 so universal in their use, and have such mysterious 
 power, that some one has said that "not until we 
 know why the rose is red, the dewdrop pure, and 
 the rainbow beautiful, can we know why the song- 
 poet is the best benefactor of humanity." Frances
 
 18 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 E. Willard has told us that no names are deathless 
 save those of the world's singers ; and whoever 
 weds perfect music to noblest words soothes the 
 world's heart as no other can. And it is one of the 
 impressive facts of history that they who make the 
 songs of the church wield a vaster power than they 
 who build her creeds. 
 
 A correspondent of the "Musical Age," writing 
 from Porto Rico early in the autumn of 1898, 
 says: 
 
 "You will never be able to appreciate what a 
 godsend to the human race the banjo is until you 
 come down here, and, strolling out of an evening, 
 hear the hundreds of them being played in the 
 camp. You cannot conceive what a blessing this 
 little half-musical instrument is to the soldiers. 
 The day is full of activity for them, but in the 
 evening there is nothing to do, and in the half-way 
 tide of friendship there is little pleasure in con- 
 versation. But when five hundred banjos play 
 'Home, Sweet Home,' all together, the croaking of 
 the frogs sounding dreamily and comfortably 
 through the interludes, you begin to feel very emo- 
 tional, and to appreciate that emotion is a fine 
 thing now and then, and that the banjo is a very 
 much misunderstood instrument." 
 
 In the realm of war songs we find the be-
 
 ILLUSTKATIONS OF THE POWEE OF SONG. 19 
 
 ginning of the poetry of every nation. There 
 is almost supreme wonderment in the battle hymn 
 when studied as to its influence in early times 
 on history. Among our northern ancestry the 
 highest salvation was reserved for him who died 
 by the sword ; and the fire which caused the blaze 
 the burning life of those terrible conquests, 
 whose war-flames lighted all Europe, was the thrill- 
 ing power of war songs. Those lyrics were the 
 outburst of patriotism and the inspirer of courage ; 
 and the degree to which the mere words of a song 
 maddened the Norsemen, and drove them to tre- 
 mendous deeds during many stormy centuries, is 
 shown in every chapter of their history, and in 
 every life of their heroes ; for the song was to them 
 sermon and newspaper, oration and argument, law 
 and promise, all in one. We are told that these 
 anthems of war were sung by bards in the fiercest 
 tones, and that their influence on the history of 
 Scandinavia reads like one loud call to battle. 
 
 The popularity and power of some of those old 
 war songs of centuries ago can hardly be under- 
 stood in our time. A few years ago an article 
 appeared in The Nineteenth Century which gave 
 instance of the influence of song in shaping the 
 destinies of some of the European countries. "By 
 a thousand facts," the article says, "we know that
 
 20 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 it was the Teutonic war song which led to the 
 destruction of Rome ; the same means shattered the 
 civilization of Southern Europe, and expurgated 
 the corruption of the oriental influence, and in 
 time led to the era of the Middle Ages and the 
 Crusades." 
 
 But what I desire to give in these pages is the 
 story of patriotic songs, and more particularly to 
 illustrate and illuminate the controlling power of 
 the great battle-hymns of the Union. The sacred 
 fire which has burned on the altar of patriotism 
 has flamed into many priceless songs, some of 
 which will forever remain among the most potent 
 influences known to the great nations of the world. 
 Such songs were born of the greatest moments of 
 the singers and the times. When the civil war 
 began, the land swarmed with singers. They were 
 not all good, but the best of them will live as long 
 as the flag. From Julia Ward Howe's brave words 
 in the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," to the negro 
 melodies of the far South, the pean of courage went 
 up. Observant people said that a nation which 
 could sing such songs at such a time was already 
 assured of victory. The story of these songs of 
 the Union warms the blood, stimulates patriotism, 
 and teaches American youth that they have a herit- 
 age of glory beyond the power of tongue to tell.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POWER OF SONG. 21 
 
 There is a story told that in some strange land 
 and time the people were about to found a bell for 
 a vast midnight tower. It should toll for dead 
 monarchs, "The king is dead," and make glad 
 clamor for the new-born prince, "Long live the 
 king." Now, this bell was not to be dug out of the 
 cold mountain ; it was to be made of something that 
 had been warmed by human touch and loved by 
 human love, and so the people came like pilgrims 
 to a shrine, and cast their offerings into a furnace 
 and went away. There were links of chains that 
 bondmen had worn, and fragments of swords that 
 had been broken in heroes' hands. There were 
 crosses, and bracelets, and rings of fine gold, and 
 trinkets of silver and toys of poor red copper. 
 They even brought things that were licked up in 
 an instant by the red tongues of flame, good words 
 they uttered, flowers they had cherished perish- 
 able things, indeed, these never could be heard, 
 perchance, in the rich tone and volume of the bell. 
 But by and by the bell woke in its chamber, and 
 its great waves of music rolled gloriously out over 
 all the land like an anthem, and every tone in it 
 was like a household word to somebody. Everyone 
 that had given the least thing to the making of 
 that bell recognized some tone and knew it with a 
 solemn joy. Poured into one fiery heat together 
 the humblest gifts were blent into one great wealth,
 
 22 STOEIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 and its music burst forth eloquent and strong, and 
 the people's patriotic soul heaved on the wave of 
 its mighty voice. 
 
 Likewise all who breathed an earnest prayer, 
 or expressed a loyal hope, or gave readily of their 
 means, or made any willing sacrifice that out of 
 that mortal contest of arms between the North and 
 the South there might come one flag one sweet 
 land of liberty can hear, in these priceless songs 
 of the Union, some tones that come of that gift.
 
 YAXKKK DOODLK. 
 I'KO.M THE PAINTING BY WlI.l.ARI). NOW IN THE ABBOTT HATX, M A HIll.KH EA I). MAS
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE FIKST AMERICAN NATIONAL AIR "YANKEE 
 
 DOODLE." 
 
 AMERICA, with a national life of a little more 
 than a century, has produced some battle songs 
 of powerful and permanent influence. When 
 the revolution began there was no song for the col- 
 onists to sing. A national hymn, as well as a na- 
 tional flag, was lacking. "Music is the universal 
 language of emotion." It gives vent to excitement. 
 There is a charming eloquence in verse, and the 
 strong feeling of great numbers always tends to 
 utterance in song. 
 
 The history of American national airs begins 
 with a breezy, good-natured sort of a tune, that 
 men often laugh at, but which has been a conquer- 
 ing power in five wars, and is known by the famil- 
 iar and eccentric title of ''Yankee Doodle." How, 
 when, or where the tune first came into use, nobody
 
 24 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 knows. It is a good deal like Topsy, "it was never 
 born, but growed." The words, adapted to the 
 music and commonly used in the Revolutionary 
 war, were the product of those stirring times, but 
 to attempt to write the history of the tune would 
 be nothing less than bewildering. There is as 
 much amazing obscurity surrounding the origin of 
 "Yankee Doodle" as there is uncertainty connected 
 with the airs to which we sing "My Country, 'Tis 
 of Thee," and "John Brown's Body Lies a Mould- 
 ering in the Grave." But, inasmuch as the tune 
 once made a big stir in the world, and rapidly rose 
 from a composition of reproach to one of triumph 
 and rejoicing, and is too priceless a heritage for 
 Americans to disown or disuse, it will be interest- 
 ing, perhaps, as well as curious, to look briefly 
 into its peculiar history. 
 
 Benson J. Lossing, that master in everything of 
 importance concerning revolutionary times and 
 men, tells us that the air iSTancy Dawson which, 
 by the process of evolution, became known as 
 Yankee Doodle antedates the American Revolu- 
 tion by at least one hundred and twenty-live years. 
 It was during Cromwell's time, it is said, that some 
 rustic bard broke out in a song that began
 
 YANKEE DOODLE. 25 
 
 . ..i 
 Nankey Doodle came to town, 
 
 Riding on a pony, 
 
 With a feather in his hat, 
 
 Upon a macaroni, 
 
 and sung to the redoubtable tune of "Yankee 
 Doodle." 
 
 It is also said that in the reign of Charles I., 
 the Puritans, who wore their hair cut short, were 
 nicknamed Roundheads by the Cavaliers, or Royal- 
 ists, who wore their hair in long ringlets. The 
 term Yankee, or Nankey, was applied in contempt 
 to the Puritans of simple ways, by the proud 
 followers of the unfortunate Charles. The word 
 Yankee is defined in several ways. The Century 
 Dictionary of Xames, while considering the origin 
 of Yankee uncertain, says that according to a 
 common statement, "Yankees" is a variation of 
 "Yenkees," or "Yengees," or "Yaunghees," a name 
 said to have been given by Massachusetts Indians 
 to the English colonists, being, it is supposed, an 
 Indian corruption of the word English. Some 
 attempt has been made to disprove the Croni- 
 wellian origin of the tune and words, but without 
 result in giving a clearer or more reasonable 
 account of either. The word Doodle is defined in 
 the old English dictionaries to be a trifling, or 
 simple fellow, and the term was applied to Croni-
 
 26 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 well, so it is claimed, in that sense ; and a macaroni 
 was a knot on which the feather was fastened. 
 
 But again referring to the word Yankee, there 
 is a story told that a farmer of Cambridge, Mass., 
 named Jonathan Hastings, who lived about the 
 year 1713, used it as a favorite cant word to 
 express excellence, as a yankee good horse or 
 yankee good cider. The students of Harvard 
 college, hearing him use it a good deal, adopted it 
 and called him Yankee Jonathan, and as he was 
 rather a weak man, the students, when they wished 
 to denote a character of that kind, would call him a 
 Yankee Jonathan. Like other cant words, it 
 spread and came finally to be applied to the New 
 Englanders as a term of reproach. 
 
 It is the consensus of opinion among those 
 entitled to a hearing in this matter, that "Yankee 
 Doodle," which has long since become an American 
 national air without words, is several hundred 
 years old, and had its beginning either in England, 
 Spain, Hungary, or Holland. Recently the New 
 York Sun printed an article to prove that the tune 
 was commonly used among the Spaniards long 
 before it emigrated to America. 
 
 In Duyckinck's Cyclopedia of American Liter- 
 ature the statement is made that a. song was in use 
 among the laborers, who in the time of harvest,
 
 YANKEE DOODLE. 27 
 
 migrated from Germany to the low countries of 
 Holland, where they received for their work as 
 much buttermilk as they could drink and a tenth of 
 the grain secured in the harvest, which began with 
 the verse sung to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" 
 
 "Yankee didel, doodel down, 
 
 Didel, dudel lanter, 
 Yanke viver, voover vown, 
 Botermilk and Tanther." 
 
 That is, buttermilk and a tenth. While this 
 narrative has been reproduced approvingly in 
 Littell's Living Age, and in many other distin- 
 guished publications, philologists say that the 
 words made to answer the purpose of a harvest 
 song as just quoted, are not found in any known 
 language in the low countries of Holland or any- 
 where else, which is good authority for supposing 
 that such a story cannot be safely taken as history. 
 The story of "Yankee Doodle" from the time it 
 was brought to this country is definite, and absorb- 
 ingly interesting. It has had a great mission. 
 With all the derision that has been heaped upon it, 
 it is none the less a great tune. When one hears 
 the once ridiculed and rollicksome strains of 
 "Yankee Doodle'' let him cogitate the fact that it 
 has been the marching tune of all the victorious 
 armies of American patriots, and has such a
 
 28 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 universal sentiment and universal nationality, that 
 it will measure the tread of coming millions. It 
 is one of the indestructible institutions of America. 
 It has a character of its own comical, rampant, 
 "rattle-brainish," but with all its oddities, it has 
 somehow entwined itself so closely about the 
 national heart that one might as well try to rob 
 the people of the American bicycle, or Bunker 
 Hill, as this "clattering, right-about-face, defiant 
 battle march." 
 
 The tune was brought to this country in 1755 
 when the British were engaged in a war with the 
 French and Indians. The story goes that the 
 militia which were called to aid the British regular 
 army were strangely clad in many colors, some 
 wearing long coats, some short ones, and many 
 having none of any kind to wear. In the 
 British army was one Dr. Richard Shackburg, 
 who not only mended shattered limbs, but was 
 somewhat of a. musician. One day he thought 
 to play a joke upon the militia because of 
 their grotesque figure and awkward manner, 
 and with much mock solemnity he presented 
 them the words and music of "Yankee Doodle," 
 commending the tune as one of the most dis- 
 tinguished in martial music. The joke greatly 
 pleased the well dressed British officers, but as a
 
 "YANKEE DOODLE." 29 
 
 joke it proved a stupendous failure, for the tune 
 soon became the battle march of the Revolution. 
 They who laugh last laugh best. The British 
 officers would raise shouts of laughter when they 
 heard the innocent and simple-minded militia play 
 "Yankee Doodle, 1 ' and the British bands would 
 repeat it in derision of the colonists. This 
 contemptuous use of the song by the English army 
 continued more than twenty years; then came 
 the battle of Lexington, and by a strange irony of 
 fate, the colonists made the British dance to the 
 tune of "Yankee Doodle." The giving of the tune 
 to the ill-circumstanced militia in mockery of their 
 unfortunate appearance, was a prophetic piece of 
 fun, for twenty-five years later Lord Cornwallis 
 was forced to march to the tune of "Yankee 
 Doodle" when entering the lines of the same colon- 
 ists to surrender his sword and his army to 
 General Washington. 
 
 There were innumerable songs adapted to the 
 tune of "Yankee Doodle" just previous to and 
 during the Revolutionary war ; and one of them 
 began 
 
 "Yankee Doodle is the tune 
 
 Americans delight in: 
 'Twill do to whistle, sing or play, 
 
 And is just the thing for fighting."
 
 30 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 But the original "Yankee Doodle" words which 
 became the song of the Revolution, are said to have 
 been written by a Connecticut gentleman, and it 
 seems that fate did him a kindness by concealing 
 his name. There were sixteen stanzas including 
 the chorus, and the title of the composition was 
 "Yankee Doodle : or Father's Return from Camp." 
 It is hardly less than a jumble of almost idiotic 
 lines, and the hilarious spirit of those times, and 
 the burlesque character of the song which created 
 such a sensation on two continents, can be best 
 illustrated by sacrificing space to all the stanzas : 
 
 Father and I went down to camp, 
 
 Along with Cap'n Good'n, 
 And there we saw the men and boys 
 
 As thick as hasty puddin'. 
 
 Chorus : 
 
 Yankee doodle, keep it up, 
 
 Yankee doodle dandy 
 Mind the music and the step, 
 
 And with the girls be handy. 
 
 And there we see a thousand men, 
 
 As rich as 'Squire David; 
 And what they wasted every day 
 
 I wish it could be saved. 
 
 The 'lasses they eat every day 
 
 Would keep a house in winter ; 
 They have so much that I'll be bound 
 
 They eat it when they're mind ter.
 
 YANKEE DOODLE. 31 
 
 And there I see a swamping gun, 
 
 Large as a log of maple, 
 Upon a deuced little cart 
 
 A load for father's cattle. 
 
 And every time they shoot it off 
 
 It takes a horn of powder, 
 And makes a noise like father's gun, 
 
 Only a nation louder. 
 
 I went as nigh to one myself 
 
 As 'Siah's underpinning; 
 And father went as nigh again, 
 
 I thought the deuce was in him. 
 
 Cousin Simon grew so bold 
 
 I thought he would have cocked it; 
 
 It scared me so I shrinked it off 
 And hung by father's pocket. 
 
 And Cap'n Davis had a gun, 
 
 He kind o' clapped his hand on't, 
 And stuck a crooked stabbing iron 
 
 Upon the little end on't, 
 
 And there 1 see a pumpkin shell 
 
 As big as mother's basin, 
 And every time they touched it off 
 They scampered like the nation. 
 
 I see a little barrel, too, 
 
 The heads were made of leather ; 
 They knocked on it with little clubs 
 
 To call the folks together. 
 
 And there was Cap'n Washington 
 
 And gentle folks about him ; 
 They say he's grown so 'tarnal proud 
 
 He will not ride without 'em.
 
 32 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 He got him in his meeting clothes 
 
 Upon a slapping stallion; 
 He set the world along in rowB 
 
 In hundreds and in millions. 
 
 The flaming ribbons in his hat 
 
 They looked so tearing fine, ah, 
 I wanted dreadfully to get 
 
 To give to my Jemima. 
 
 I see another snarl of men 
 
 A-digging graves, they told me, 
 So 'tarnal long, so 'tarnal deep, 
 
 They 'tended they should hold me. 
 
 It scared me so I hooked it off, 
 
 Nor stopped, as I remember, 
 Xor turned about, till I got home, 
 
 Locked up in mother's chamber. 
 
 There is some disagreement as to the date- of 
 these words, one authority claiming that they first 
 appeared in 1765, but the general opinion appears 
 to be that they were written about 1775, as the first 
 recorded account is of their being sung at the 
 battle of Bunker Hill. 
 
 Compared with the later battle songs of the 
 Union, "Yankee Doodle" dwindles into an aggre- 
 gation of senseless stanzas, but its remarkable 
 popularity and power at a time when the American 
 colonists were making the supreme effort for 
 independence closely link it with imperishable 
 historical associations.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BILLINGS THE FIRST AMERICAN WAR SONG 
 
 WRITER. 
 
 THE quaintest character that appears among 
 the makers of American war songs was 
 William Billings, who was born in Boston^ 
 in 1746, and died in the same city in 1800. The 
 story of his life has a peculiar interest for the 
 reason that he was the earliest native writer of 
 music in America. He was zealous in the cause of 
 liberty, and the patriotic ardor which characterized 
 his songs and tunes made them a power among the 
 colonists. The New England soldiers, who, dur- 
 ing the war of the Revolution, were stationed in 
 the Southern States, committed many of his tunes 
 to memory, and amused themselves by singing 
 them in camp to the delight of all who heard them. 
 This Yankee composer of psalm tunes, 
 anthems, and writer of army songs, should not be
 
 34 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 judged by the musical standard of the nineteenth 
 century. Flippant critics of the new school of 
 music have tried to make much fun of him because 
 he had neither a musical nor literary education. 
 He was a genius, a "diamond in the rough," and 
 it has been said by some one that Billings' works 
 have survived their critics, "and are sung in grate- 
 ful recollection by thousands over all the land, 
 while forgetfulness covers his detractors." 
 
 In his day, and according to his opportunities, 
 Billings was a great success. He was taught the 
 business of a tanner, and worked at the trade for a 
 number of years. He was born with music in his 
 soul, and quite early in his young manhood began 
 to sing, then to teach, and finally to write words 
 and compose music for church people and the 
 colonial army. Of course, he was an "awkward 
 harmonist," a "worse contrapuntist," his "tech- 
 nique" was deficient, his "consecutive fifths" were 
 out of joint, his "progressions of octaves" were 
 illogical, and his chords and harmonies were 
 tumbled together without order, but lie roused the 
 people by his songs, and was the great musical 
 missionary of his time. 
 
 Billings was a man of rare spiritual earnest- 
 ness, and his patriotism was as fervid as his 
 religious nature was intense. Dr. Frederic
 
 WILLIAM BILLINGS. 35 
 
 Louis Hitter, in his "Music in America," says: 
 
 "The American Revolution caused the colonists to 
 
 turn against everything that was British. The 
 
 innocent old psalm tunes received a part of the 
 
 momentary patriotic hatred ; and with the tea the 
 
 British tunes were also thrown overboard." 
 
 Billings was the man of the time with "the genius 
 
 and zeal to write words and music that moved the 
 
 hearts and nerved the arms to strike for freedom 
 
 in those early days." He assumed the task of 
 
 furnishing words and music to take the place of 
 
 those which had gone overboard with the tea. 
 
 He became the singer of the army and the psalmist 
 
 of the church. His superior inventive genius and 
 
 his ever glowing enthusiasm, enabled him to supply 
 
 music for almost every occasion. One of his 
 
 popular songs was written for the special use of the 
 
 army, although it was taken up by the people and 
 
 became an inspiring force. It was set to the tune 
 
 of "Chester," his own composition, an air that was 
 
 frequently heard from every fife in Xcw England. 
 
 The readers can obtain a tolerably fair idea of the 
 
 quality of Billings' patriotism and the intensity of 
 
 his poetic fire by reading his battle hymn: 
 
 Let tyrants shake their iron rod. 
 And slavery clank her galling chains; 
 We'll fear them not, we'll trust in Cod. 
 New England's God forever reicrns.
 
 36 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton, too, 
 With Prescott and Cornwallis join'd 
 Together plot our overthrow 
 In one infernal league combin'd. 
 
 When God inspir'd us for the fight 
 
 Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc'd, 
 
 Their ships were shatter'd in our sight, 
 
 Or swiftly driven from our coast. 
 
 The foe comes on with haughty stride, 
 Our troops advance with martial noise ; 
 Their veterans flee before our arms, 
 And generals yield to beardless boys. 
 
 What grateful offerings shall we bring? 
 What shall we render to the Lord? 
 Loud Hallelujahs let us sing, 
 And praise His name on ev'ry chord. 
 
 Billings was a many-sided man in musical 
 matters. He introduced the violoncello in the 
 church, which was a bold innovation in those days. 
 He also brought into use the "pitch-pipe" to deliver 
 choir leaders from frequent stumbling in pitching 
 tunes by guess work. Dr. Hitter says Billings 
 also originated the concert that became immensely 
 popular throughout New England. A writer in 
 the Chicago Times-Herald says Billings "para- 
 phrased the psalms of David and brought them to 
 date. Appreciating the religious fervor and the 
 spirit of the day, he made them hymns of battle. 
 The people familiar with their scriptures, firm in 
 belief in the justice of their cause, found only
 
 WILLIAM BILLINGS. 37 
 
 natural an application to themselves of the old 
 songs of bondage of the children of Israel." 
 
 It can be justly said that Billings "the 
 mixture of ludicrous, eccentric, commonplace, 
 smart, honest, patriotic, and religious elements" 
 did more for the musical advancement of New 
 England, considering the condition of the times 
 in which he lived, than any man who followed him. 
 For one hundred and fifty years music in New 
 England scarcely had a voice, until Billings came. 
 We are told by Hezekiah Butterworth, long con- 
 nected with the Youth's Companion, that, like the 
 prophet of old, he led the way of those who have 
 made Boston a musical city. He was a man of 
 surprising energy. He published several books of 
 musical instruction, and six tune books, and nearly 
 all the airs were his own composition. This zeal- 
 ous patriot, who was the first to teach the Ameri- 
 can people to sing anthems of praise and songs of 
 victory, has been dead one century, lacking one 
 year and a half, and no monument, not so much as 
 a simple stone slab, marks his resting place in a 
 Boston graveyard. 
 
 There were many attempts to write patriotic 
 songs during the Revolutionary war. It seems that 
 almost every regiment in the colonial army had its 
 war poet, but when the war ended the songs were
 
 38 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 soon forgotten. The music was "jostled out of ex- 
 istence" by that strangest and most grotesque of 
 all tunes "Yankee Doodle." Just why the people 
 of that generation, and of generations since, have 
 accepted that tune and allowed others more merito- 
 rious to become obsolete, is a freak of the Ameri- 
 can mind that puzzles men of sober thinking. One 
 critic, I think it is Dr. Hitter, says that if a prize 
 had been offered, open to competition among all 
 the musicians of this globe, for the most melodi- 
 ously insignificant, shallow, and trivial song, the 
 author of "Yankee Doodle" would have received 
 the distinguished reward. 
 
 William Billings composed several tunes 
 which were worthy to continue in commemoration 
 of the momentous times which produced them ; but 
 somehow not known to our philosophy they are 
 as dead as a mummy, while "Yankee Doodle," with 
 all its shallowness and grotesqueness, is still a pean 
 of victorv.
 
 S 'S.
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FIRST ORIGINAL AMERICAN SOXG 
 
 "ilAIL COLUMBIA." 
 
 T is one of the curiosities of history that tjie first 
 American song of a national character was 
 written for the purpose of drawing a large 
 house to a theatrical performance in Philadelphia 
 in order to save a young singer and actor from 
 pecuniary embarrassment. 
 
 Mr. S. J. Adair Fitz-Gerald, in his interesting 
 "Stories of Famous Songs," says : "There is no 
 romance whatever attached to the origin of 'Hail 
 Columbia.' " It is evident that he said this be- 
 cause he did not understand the story of the stormy 
 times in which this song was written. 
 
 England and France were involved in a quar- 
 rel, and war between the two countries was immi- 
 nent. In 1704 the United Stales had concluded 
 the Jav treaty with Great Britain, which was
 
 40 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 assailed with furious denunciations by the Repub- 
 licans, who later became known as Democrats. The 
 treaty was thought by them to be too friendly to 
 England, as it pledged the United States not to 
 interfere in behalf of France when a crisis was 
 reached by the two nations. The Federalists, be- 
 longing to the administration party, gave the treaty 
 their hearty approval, and many of them were so 
 bitter in their hatred of France that any insult 
 whatever from that power was enough to rouse 
 them to advocate war. This feeling of bitterness 
 between the Federalists and Democrats continued 
 until 1798, when, during the height of the popular 
 fury against France, the Federal Congress passed 
 the famous alien and sedition acts, by which aliens 
 were rendered liable to summary banishment from 
 the United States at the discretion of the president. 
 This made the breach between the factions wider 
 than ever. Party spirit ran high. Resentfulness 
 and hate were engendered on all hands. Mr. Mot- 
 ley, in his brilliant history of William the Silent, 
 tells us that a little dog saved the Dutch Republic; 
 and it can be said that a song, more than any other 
 agency, incited national pride, allayed party pas- 
 sion, and averted a serious entanglement in the 
 European conflict. 
 
 It was during this reign of partisanship that
 
 HAIL COLUMBIA. 41 
 
 a theater was opened in Philadelphia, and a benefit 
 was to be given to a young man, Gilbert Fox by 
 name, who had some talent as a singer. But the 
 warlike condition of things threw discouragement 
 on the undertaking. The singer was somewhat 
 acquainted with Joseph Hopkinson, who was then 
 a young lawyer, and calling upon him one Satur- 
 day afternoon in April, 1798, he earnestly pleaded 
 with him to furnish a patriotic song which could 
 be sung to the tune then known as the "President's 
 March," composed in 1789 by a German professor 
 in Philadelphia, named Phylo, alias Feyles, alias 
 Thyla, alias Phyla, alias Roth, and was first 
 played at Trenton when Washington was on his 
 way to ]STew York to be inaugurated president. 
 Mr. Hopkinson's sympathy for the young man in- 
 duced him to write the words now recognized as 
 "Hail Columbia." The two stanzas which were 
 more frequently used than any others, are the 
 
 following : 
 
 Hail, Columbia! happy land! 
 Hail, ye heroes, heav'n born band! 
 
 Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, 
 
 Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, 
 And when the storm of war was gone, 
 Enjoyed the peace your valor won. 
 
 Let independence be our boast, 
 
 Ever mindful what it cost, 
 Ever grateful for the prize, 
 Let its altar reach the skies.
 
 42 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 CHOBUS : 
 
 Firm, united, let us be, f v , 
 
 Rallying round our liberty! 
 As a band of brothers joined, 
 Peace and safety we shall find. 
 
 Immortal patriots, rise once more! 
 
 Defend your rights, defend your shore! 
 Let no rude foe, with impious hand, 
 Let no rude foe, with impious hand, 
 
 Invade the shrine where sacred lies, 
 
 Of toil and blood the well-earned prize. 
 While off'ring peace sincere and just, 
 In heaven we place a manly trust, 
 That truth and justice shall prevail, 
 
 And every scheme of bondage fail. 
 
 The song packed the house. It was called for 
 again and again during the same performance, and 
 at the finale the audience rose and lustily joined 
 in the chorus, and the public heart was so pro- 
 foundly touched by its patriotic sentiment that 
 England and France sank before "Hail Colum- 
 bia.''' The song evoked such universal interest 
 that within a few nights after it was first given, 
 President Adams and the heads of all the govern- 
 mental departments attended the theater to hear 
 the new-born song, and the enthusiasm was so in- 
 tense that the singer was called out time and again. 
 
 Congress was in session at the time, and when 
 thousands of people assembled on the streets in 
 the evenings, congressmen joined them in singing
 
 HAIL COLUMBIA. 43 
 
 the new national song. It is not a great song, per- 
 haps, and possibly it has endured far beyond any 
 merit of its own, and certainly, as Judge Hopkin- 
 son says, beyond his expectation. But the song 
 which kindled and kept alive an American spirit, 
 when such a spirit was vital to national honor and 
 public peace lifting the people above the disturb- 
 ing passions and conflicting policies of the hour 
 is a song which should live always in the good will 
 of the American people.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 "the stae spangled banner." 
 
 OF all the songs inspired of patriotism and born 
 in the fierce passions of war, "The Star 
 Spangled Banner" probably has the firmest 
 hold on the American people. It is the product of 
 one of the most romantic and thrilling events in 
 our national history. 
 
 With the renewal of war between England and 
 France in 1803, came a return of trouble to the 
 United States. Shortly after the war with France 
 began, England claimed the right to search Ameri- 
 can vessels for deserters from the English navy. 
 Thousands of Americans were seized and forced 
 to fight for England ; and to avenge these outrages, 
 the United States declared war in 1812. It is 
 another curious fact of history that the excellent 
 frigates built during the exciting period which 
 called forth "Hail Columbia," when the party in
 
 1 
 
 FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.
 
 THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER. 45 
 
 power was thought by the opposition to be too 
 friendly toward Great Britain, were the nucleus 
 of the gallant navy that by and by should win such 
 triumphs over England in the stormy times that 
 produced "The Star Spangled Banner." 
 
 In the latter part of August, 1814, Dr. Wil- 
 liam Beanes, an old resident of Upper Marlbor- 
 ough, Maryland, was captured by Gen. Ross of 
 the British army, and held as a prisoner on the 
 admiral's flagship, the "Surprise." The doctor 
 was a personal friend of Francis Scott Key, then 
 a young lawyer living at Baltimore. On the 2d 
 of September, 1814, writing from Georgetown, to 
 his mother, Mr. Key said : "I am going to Balti- 
 more in the morning to proceed in a flag vessel to 
 Gen. Ross. Old Dr. Beanes, of Marlborough, is 
 taken prisoner by the enemy, who threaten to carry 
 him off." Key found the English fleet in Chesa- 
 peake Bay, and was kindly received by Admiral 
 Cochrane. But the enemy was about to make a 
 combined attack by sea and land upon Fort 
 McHenry; and while Gen. Ross consented to the 
 release of Dr. Beanes, it was stipulated that all of 
 the American party should remain on the "Sur- 
 prise" until the fort was reduced. 
 
 All during that eventful night, the 13th of 
 September, the great guns of the fleet poured a
 
 46 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 blazing shower of shot and shell upon the fortress. 
 Key, standing on the deck of the English ship, in 
 the midst of the excitement of the terrific bom- 
 bardment, could see at intervals, by the glare of 
 the rocket and the flash of the cannon, the Ameri- 
 can flag waving victoriously over its gallant de- 
 fenders. It was a hot, persistent fight, taxing the 
 courage, the endurance, and the patriotism of the 
 brave soldiers to the utmost. In the stirring enthu- 
 siasm of that supreme moment, and at the dawn's 
 early light, when the Stars and Stripes rose above 
 the smoke of conflict, and seemed to wave in 
 triumph from the very battlements of heaven, Key 
 wrote the song that should be as deathless as the 
 flag itself : 
 
 say can you see by the dawn's early light, 
 
 What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleani- 
 ng; 
 Whose stripes and bright stars thro' the perilous fight 
 
 O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly stream- 
 ing 
 And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, 
 Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; 
 say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave 
 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? 
 
 On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, 
 Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence repose-, 
 
 What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep. 
 As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
 
 ''the star spangled banner." 47 
 
 Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, 
 In full glory reflected now shines in the stream ; 
 'Tis the star-spangled banner Oh, long may it wave 
 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! 
 
 And where is that band who so vauntingly swore 
 
 That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion 
 A home and a country should leave us no more? 
 
 Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps pollution. 
 No refuge could save the hireling and slave 
 From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; 
 And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave 
 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 
 
 ! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand 
 
 Between their loved homes and the war's desolation; 
 Blest with vict'ry and peace may the Heaven-rescued land 
 Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a 
 nation. 
 Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, 
 And this be our motto: "In God is our trust;" 
 And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave 
 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! 
 
 The day after the bombardment, Key was 
 taken ashore, and a clear copy of the song was 
 made ; and the day following it was read to a 
 friend and kinsman of Key, Judge Nicholson, 
 who, delighted with it, urged that it should 
 be printed, and in a few hours "The Star Spangled 
 Banner" was road everywhere in Baltimore, and 
 was received with the liveliest pleasure. 
 
 flow to utilize the song was the next question. 
 It was onlv a few days after the words were cir-
 
 48 STORIES OF GEEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 culated throughout the city, that a gathering of 
 army comrades took place at a one-story tavern 
 standing next door to the Holiday Street theater. 
 Key was present, and read the song two or three 
 times, and the pathetic eloquence of the lines elec- 
 trified the soldiers. When some one demanded 
 that it should be sung, one account says that Ferdi- 
 nand Durang, an actor, being acquainted with an 
 old English air, "To Anacreon in Heaven," quickly 
 made the proper adaptation, and, mounting a 
 chair, sang the song with such voice and feeling 
 as to throw the hearers in the wildest state of ex- 
 citement. In four days it found its way on the 
 stage, where it was received with spontaneous and 
 unbounded enthusiasm. The song seems to have 
 been pitched to the keynote of a screaming shell, 
 and everywhere, in places of amusement, in camp, 
 and in the home, it went straight to the popular 
 heart. 
 
 The old English tune, "To Anacreon in 
 Heaven," with which "The Star Spangled Banner" 
 is inseparably associated, was composed in Lon- 
 don, sometime between 1770 and 1775, by John 
 Strafford Smith. He was a member of an aristo- 
 cratic society called the "Anacreonites," and the 
 regular fortnightly meetings were always opened
 
 THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER. 49 
 
 with the constitutional song, "To Anacreon in 
 Heaven." 
 
 The flag of Fort McHenry, which inspired the 
 immortal lines of "The Star Spangled Banner/' 
 was made by Mrs. Mary Pickersgill, whose mother, 
 Rebecca Young, made the first flag carried by the 
 colonists in the war of the Revolution. Its orig- 
 inal dimensions were forty feet by twenty-nine, 
 but the shells from the English fleet, and the de- 
 structiveness of time, reduced its length to thirty- 
 two feet. It is still in a fair state of preservation, 
 and is owned by Mr. Eben Appleton, of Yonkers, 
 X. Y., whose grandfather, Colonel George Arm- 
 stead, was one of the heroic defenders of McHenry 
 in 1814. 
 
 Francis Scott Key was thirty-four years old 
 when he wrote his famous song, and died on the 
 11th of January, 1843. William Richard Here- 
 ford sang of "Destiny" in these four lines : 
 
 "Some singers sing but a single song 
 And the world remembers every word, 
 
 While others sing their whole lives long, 
 Then die at last unknown, unheard." 
 
 Key was the singer of a single song, and his name 
 will not fade from the minds of men as long as the 
 Stars and Stripes endure. 
 
 There is splendid patriotism in the consecra-
 
 50 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 tion by James Lick, of California, of $150,000 
 to the building and maintaining of a monument 
 in San Francisco dedicated to the memory of him 
 who wrote the first flag song of the Republic. And 
 the recent movement in Maryland to accept con- 
 tributions of school children of that state for the 
 building of a monument to the memory of the 
 author of "The Star Spangled Banner," is a noble 
 expression of patriotic sentiment. We rear monu- 
 ments to all sorts of heroes, and why not build 
 memorials of the men and women who have in- 
 spired us by their songs to win victories, not only 
 in war, but still greater victories in morals and 
 religion, and which have been won on the battle- 
 field of the human heart ? 
 
 Colonel Henry Watterson, in his admirable ad- 
 dress at the unveiling of the Key monument at 
 Frederick, Md., on the 9th of August, 1898, said 
 that "the ways of Providence to man are inscrut- 
 able ; that some mysterious power, unexplained and 
 unfathomable, has, from the beginning of time, 
 ruled the destinies of men." It is never by acci- 
 dent or chance that a great song that moves the 
 world is born. Victor Hugo tells us that it was the 
 decree of God the law of the nineteenth century 
 that Bonaparte should not conquer at Waterloo. 
 ''That vast man had been impeached before the
 
 Tin-: ki:v moxcmi-xt. i-'ukokijick. md.
 
 THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER. 51 
 
 Infinite." By an influence as divinely controlled, 
 Charles Wesley, an impetuous boy of fifteen, was 
 led to decline the heirship to the Wellesley estate 
 in Ireland ; for, according to all human calcula- 
 tion, had it been otherwise, the world never would 
 have sung his incomparable hymns which have 
 touched the heart of Christendom ; and the soldier 
 who overthrew Bonaparte the most ambitious 
 despot in modern warfare never would have been 
 born. Edmund Burke says: "That great chain 
 of causes, which, linking one to another, even to 
 the throne of God himself, can never be unraveled 
 by any industry of ours." 
 
 'The hour and the man met in the struggle at 
 Fort McHenry, not by any power of the will or 
 the flesh, but by a law of the Almighty, and out of 
 that baptism of fire came a glorious inspiration, 
 and from the soul of Key burst forth "The Star 
 Spangled Banner," the "Gloria in Exeelsis of 
 American freedom." / It is a song that will ever 
 inspire a devotion to the flag, and like its com- 
 panion, "Old Glory," it will never find a grave- 
 yard, but will sing on through the centuries, its 
 music ever accelerating the step of American free- 
 men in the great march of human progress. 
 
 There are three national songs with which the 
 American people ought to be perfectly familiar
 
 52 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 '"The Star Spangled Banner," "My Country, 'tis 
 of Thee," and "The Battle Hymn of the Repub- 
 lic." The first one chants the glory of the flag, 
 and it is deeply to be regretted that the great mass 
 of people are so little acquainted with the lines 
 of the song of immortal memory. The death of 
 that splendid and highly honored tragedian, 
 Thomas W. Keene, which occurred in May, 1898, 
 calls to mind the fact that a few years ago he 
 joined several distinguished actors, singers and 
 orators, in taking part in a Press entertainment 
 given at Central Music Hall, Chicago. After the 
 tremendous applause which greeted the appearance 
 of Mr. Keene had ceased, he said he would recite 
 something new, and began "The Star Spangled 
 Banner." A few in the audience applauded him, 
 others tittered, and many laughed in derision; but 
 Mr. Iveene took the outbreak pleasantly, and be- 
 fore proceeding further he said : " "The Star 
 Spangled Banner' is so new to you that I will give 
 $100 to charity in Chicago if any man or woman 
 in this audience will read it from memory." Xot 
 a person responded. 
 
 Whenever the spirit of patriotism rises to its 
 divinest height, this song is sure to be present. On 
 the Sunday following the firing on Sumter, the 
 scone in thousands of churches in the North was
 
 THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER. 53 
 
 one which attested the loyalty of our people; and 
 the memory of those stirring times and all which 
 that Sabbath meant to this Union has not grown 
 dim in the passing of a third of a century. When 
 men and women met to worship on that day, they 
 also met to vow their allegiance to the flag ; and in * 
 hundreds of churches the pulpits were draped with 
 the Stars and Stripes, and there went up from the 
 hearts, as well as from the lips of the people, the 
 sublime strains of "The Star Spangled Banner."' 
 
 Just four years after the flag was hauled down 
 at Sumter, there was a memorable gathering at the 
 same fort. It was on the very day Lincoln was 
 assassinated. The self-same flag, shell-tattered in 
 the bombardment of '61, was to be re-hoisted. 
 Henry Ward Beecher was requested by the United 
 States government to go to Sumter and deliver the 
 oration. It was a day of victory for "Old Glory."' 
 
 After the cannon had given some emphatic ex- 
 pressions of exultant gladness, the flag was uncov- 
 ered at the base of the staff, and a ripple of 
 applause passed over the multitude, but this was 
 hushed as if by the very breath of God, and the 
 pent-up feelings of the great orator and of the vast 
 concourse broke out in tears and sobs of joy. But 
 when Maj. Anderson hoisted the flag, and it floated 
 beautifully out in the charming breeze of a perfect
 
 54 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 day, the band struck up "The Star Spangled Ban- 
 ner," and the people gave their patriotic emo- 
 tions full sway in singing the song of the flag 
 triumphant. 
 
 There is no other song that stirs one's pat- 
 riotic l>lood with more vigor in any great na- 
 tional emergency than this anthem of the flag. 
 One week after the blowing up of the battleship 
 Maine, the orchestra, at Daly's Theatre in New 
 York, had played a few bars of the regular 
 program, when suddenly it changed to "The Star 
 Spangled Banner." The patriotic tune had not 
 proceeded far before there came a tremendous yell. 
 No one knew from whence it came, for 
 it seemed to come from everywhere at once. 
 A report of the scene says that the patriotic 
 play-goers forgot their surroundings, and, leap- 
 ing to their feet, cheered in a way that 
 drowned the orchestra. Women waved their 
 fans, handkerchiefs and programs, others joined 
 in the refrain, and finally the whole audi- 
 ence rose and sang the inspiring words until the 
 music ceased ; and the soul-stirring scene closed 
 with a mighty shout that fairly shook the walls. 
 It was said that not another such event had been 
 witnessed in any ISTew York theater since civil war 
 times. It was an outburst of emotion inspired by
 
 THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER. 55 
 
 the song, and was indicative of the state of the 
 public mind in reference to the Cuban question. 
 The circumstance illustrates the fact that "Ameri- 
 can patriotism is always on tap, and that the 
 American people stand ever ready to leap, like an 
 armed giant, into the fight at the first call of duty." 
 One of the most thrilling incidents in the 
 annals of war, showing the power of patriotic song, 
 was that on the ramparts of Santiago on that 
 memorable Friday, the 1st of July, 1898. I think 
 it was in the Twenty-first regulars, that man after 
 man was fast falling in blood and death before a 
 blazing fire of Mauser bullets, when the soldiers, 
 catching a fresh gleam of the flag at a critical mo- 
 ment, spontaneously began to sing 'The Star 
 Spangled Banner/' and its majestic strains so 
 thrilled the souls of the men that they seemed to be 
 nerved by some superhuman power to defy the 
 storm of battle, and to win the victory that sealed 
 the fate of Santiago.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "my country, 'tis of thee." 
 
 AMONG the mysteries of human life none is 
 farther beyond our power of penetration 
 than the inspired moment that comes to some 
 soul, and out of which is born a great song that 
 moves the heart of the world. These single flashes 
 of inspiration, producing songs that have so power- 
 fully affected the destinies of humanity, are never 
 repeated, in an equal degree, in the same indi- 
 vidual. Every poet of the soul, every minstrel of 
 our joys and hopes and heart-experiences, has his 
 masterpiece; and it seems to have been foreor- 
 dained that he shall never bring forth another of 
 like merit. There are thousands of things in these 
 strange lives of ours that we cannot explain, and 
 this is one of them. It is as great a mystery as 
 love, or the union of soul and body. Brander Mat- 
 thews suvs that "no man has ever vet sat him down
 
 SAMUEL I\ .SMITH.
 
 MY COUNTRY,, TIS OF THEE. 57 
 
 and taken up his pen and said, 'I will write a na- 
 tional hymn,' and composed either words or music 
 which the nation was willing to take for its own." 
 Songs that live, and make great history, are never 
 produced in that way. When Mozart was asked 
 how he set to work to compose a symphony, he re- 
 plied : "If once you think how you are to do it, 
 you will never write anything worth hearing; I 
 write because I cannot help it." 
 
 In the making of songs many pieces "are called 
 but few chosen." There is a single "Mount Wash- 
 ington" standing out in clear relief above and be- 
 yond all other songs which men and women pro- 
 duce. And if we turn to history we will find this 
 illustrated in national hymns and battle songs by 
 Francis Scott Key's "Star Spangled Banner ;" 
 Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Repub- 
 lic ;" George F. Root's "Battle Cry of Freedom ;" 
 Henry C. Work's "Marching Through Georgia ;" 
 Rouget de Lisle's "Marseillaise Hymn;" Max 
 Schenckenberger's "Watch on the Rhine ;" and in 
 sacred song by Isaac Watts' "When I Survey the 
 Wondrous Cross ;" Charles Wesley's "Jesus, Lover 
 of My Soul;" Augustus M. Toplady's "Rock of 
 Ages ;" Edward Perronet's "All Hail the Power 
 of Jesus' j\ ; ame ;" Henry Francis Lyte's "Abide 
 With Me;" Sarah Flower Adams' "Nearer, My
 
 58 STORIES OF GEEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 God, to Thee ;" Charlotte Elliott's "Just as I Am ;" 
 Ray Palmer's "My Faith Looks Up to Thee ;" and 
 John Henry Newman's "Lead, Kindly Light." 
 And Dr. Samuel F. Smith was also a man of one 
 song one that towers grandly above all other 
 songs he ever wrote. While he is the author of 
 that fine, popular mission hymn, "The Morning 
 Light Is Breaking," it was his national song that 
 made his name and his fame a part of the imperish- 
 able history of America and American patriotism. 
 Seventy years ago Dr. Smith was graduated 
 from Harvard University in the class with the dis- 
 tinguished Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who, in 
 later years, thus referred to his classmate in a re- 
 union poem : 
 
 "And there's a fine youngster of excellent pith, 
 Kale tried to conceal him by naming him Smith." 
 
 Three years after his graduation this 
 "youngster of excellent pith" wrote a poem of four 
 stanzas. It did not then appear to be a special con- 
 tribution to our patriotic literature, or of any par- 
 ticular value to the hyinnology of the church; but 
 the gift was so important so national, so uplift- 
 ing, and so ennobling in its influence, that sixty- 
 live years later, Dr. Holmes said, a short time be- 
 fore his death, in 1894: "Now, there's Smith. 
 His name will be honored bv everv school child in
 
 f MY COUNTRY, 'TIS OF THEE." 59 
 
 the land when I have been forgotten a hundred 
 years. He wrote 'My Country, 'tis of Thee.' If 
 he had said 'Our Country' the hymn would not 
 have been immortal, but that 'My' was a master- 
 stroke. Every one who sings the hymn at once 
 feels a personal ownership in his native land. The 
 hymn will last as long as the country." 
 
 Samuel F. Smith was born in Boston in 1808. 
 He became a theological student, and was gradu- 
 ated from Andover Seminary in 1832. The story 
 of the origin of the great national hymn is a simple 
 one and has been many times repeated. In 1832 
 William C. Woodbridge, a friend of Dr. Smith's, 
 who had been visiting Germany and the German 
 schools, brought home with him a lot of German 
 music books. Mr. Woodbridge gave the books to 
 Lowell Mason, who was then giving vocal music 
 an extraordinary impulse throughout ISTew Eng- 
 land ; and afterwards did more to raise the stand- 
 ard of American church music and make it popu- 
 lar than any other man who ever lived. But Mr. 
 Mason, being unable to read German, turned the 
 books over to Dr. Smith, remarking at the time 
 that he would be pleased to have any poetical trans- 
 lation the young man saw proper to make. "Turn- 
 ing over the leaves of the books one gloomy day in 
 Eebrnarv, 1832," said Dr. Smith many vears
 
 60 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 afterwards, "I came across the air 'God Save the 
 King.' I liked the music. I glanced at the Ger- 
 man words at the foot of the page. Under the in- 
 spiration of the moment I went to work and in 
 half an hour 'America' was the result. It was 
 written on a scrap of paper I picked up from the 
 table, and the hymn of to-day is substantially as it 
 was written that day :" 
 
 My country ! 'tis of thee, 
 Sweet land of liberty, 
 
 Of thee I sing; 
 Land where my fathers died, 
 Land of the pilgrims' pride, 
 From every mountain side 
 
 Let freedom ring. 
 
 My native country, thee, 
 Land of the noble, free, 
 
 Thy name I love; 
 I love thy rocks and rills, 
 Thy woods and templed hills: 
 My heart with rapture thrills 
 
 Like that above. 
 
 Let music swell the breeze, 
 And ring from all the trees 
 
 Sweet freedom's song; 
 Let mortal tongues awake, 
 Let all that breathe partake, 
 Let rocks their silence break, 
 
 The sound prolong.
 
 MY COUNTRY, TIS OF THEE. 61 
 
 Our Fathers' God, to Thee, 
 Author of liberty, 
 
 To Thee we sing; 
 Long may our land be bright 
 With freedom's holy light; 
 Protect us by Thy might, 
 
 Great God, our King! 
 
 Edward Everett Hale tells the pleasant story 
 that when he was ten years old he had spent all his 
 Fourth of July pennies in root-beer, ginger snaps 
 and oysters, at a celebration on Boston Common, 
 and was strolling homeward when he saw hundreds 
 of Sunday school children marching into Park 
 Street Church. Boy-like, he soon joined the pro- 
 cession, got into the church, made his way to the 
 gallery, and heard five hundred young voices sing 
 "My Country, 'tis of Thee," to the tunc that Dr. 
 Smith had found in a German music book. This 
 was in 1832, and was the first time the hymn had 
 been sung in public. 
 
 It is difficult to trace the origin of the tune 
 which will be forever associated with "My 
 Country, 'tis of Thee." Some suppose it was 
 composed in England about 1715, by Henry 
 Carey, poet and musician, who died by his own 
 hand in 1743. But there seems to be no suffi- 
 cient reason for attributing to him the air to which 
 the national hvmns of America, England and
 
 62 STORIES OF GKEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Prussia are sung. The Xew York Sun, in a clever 
 answer to a correspondent as to the beginning of 
 "America," essayed to follow the tune down the 
 centuries as follows : "The tune was not English 
 originally, though the English use it for their 
 royal anthem. It was used by the Germans long 
 before it was taken up by the English, and we are 
 assured by a musical explorer that the Germans 
 got it from the Norsemen, who had probably heard 
 it sung by the Finns, who most likely captured 
 it from the Huns, who doubtless brought it from 
 Asia when they entered Europe. We told in the 
 Sun long ago of our attempt to trace this very old 
 tune through the ages, from country to country, 
 and to its birthplace. We found that it had been 
 known to various races, and we found it as far back 
 as we could go. It, or something like it, was per- 
 haps sung by the Jews in the first temple, and they 
 may have borrowed it from the Egyptians. It 
 is of a solemn and majestic strain, suitable to some 
 of the Psalms of David. It is certain tnat the 
 English did not invent or concoct the tune to 
 which they sing the words of 'God Save the Queen,' 
 nnd to which we sing the words of 'America.' We 
 need not be ashamed to use the tune because it 
 existed in other countries before we adopted it, or 
 was used bv generations that lived before Colum-
 
 MY COUNTRY, TIS OF THEE. 63 
 
 bus discovered America, or was known to musi- 
 cians before the time of St. Ambrose." 
 
 Whatever may be the history of this tune, one 
 thing is strikingly significant : "There certainly 
 must be something more than ordinarily inspiring 
 in an air which has struck the popular heart of the 
 four greatest nations of the earth." 
 
 "My Country, 'tis of Thee" did not have a 
 wide spread popularity until the civil war began. 
 It was found in a few hymn books, and was sung on 
 stated occasions, but as a national song as a 
 special inspirer of patriotism it did not stir the 
 people in any impressive degree until the flag was 
 shot down at Sumter. Since then it has been used 
 more frequently than any other of the so-called 
 national songs. It is recognized the world over 
 as a great national hymn beautifully simple in 
 its poetry, rich in its patriotic sentiment, and 
 vigorous enough to reflect the ennobling spirit of 
 true American liberty. 
 
 Dr. Smith tells us : "I have heard it on the 
 Atlantic Ocean, on the Baltic Sea and on the 
 Mediterranean, in London, Liverpool, Stockholm, 
 Copenhagen, Paris, Rome, Xaplcs, in the baths at 
 Pompeii, in Athens, Calcutta and Rangoon. On 
 the earth I have heard it on Pike's Peak, and 
 under the earth in the caverns at Manitou,
 
 64 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Colorado, where it was played on the stalactites." 
 It has been sung on many a march, on battlefields, 
 in hospitals, on days of great rejoicing, and on days 
 that were dark and uncertain to those who had 
 sacrificed much that their country might become 
 indeed one "sweet land of liberty." 
 
 The song is simplicity itself, and yet it is a 
 curious fact that others more gifted in poetic 
 faculty, and of greater minds than Dr. Smith, have 
 tried their best to make a song which would be 
 truly a national anthem, but no one except this 
 plain, kindly and noble-hearted Baptist clergyman 
 has come within a thousand miles of success. He 
 alone has given us "My Country, 'tis of Thee," 
 and it will never be repeated. 
 
 One of the most remarkable scenes ever 
 witnessed on the Chicago board of trade was in 
 1889, when Dr. Smith, stopping in the city for a 
 short time, was invited to visit that famous institu- 
 tion. It was during business hours, and when it 
 became known that the author of "America" was 
 on 'Change, he was carried to the pit, and hundreds 
 of these mighty men of trade, surrounding him 
 with uncovered heads, began to sing "America." 
 It, was a vast chorus of robust voices, and in the 
 marvelous delirium of the song the enthusiasm 
 knew no bounds. The intensity of the feeling
 
 MY COUNTRY, TIS OF THEE. 65 
 
 produced by the song could not be adequately 
 
 described, and the scene was so singularly 
 
 impressive that one writer, borrowing from 
 
 Shakespeare, said: 
 
 "If I should live a thousand year3 
 I never should forget it." 
 
 "America" is so world-wide in its fame as the 
 national hymn of a great, liberty loving people, 
 that a copy in Dr. Smith's own handwriting was 
 requested by the Pope for the Vatican Library. 
 He acceded to the papal request, and the copy was 
 presented to his Holiness, through David Pells 
 Secor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, on Xew Year's 
 day, 1895, ten months and a half before the 
 doctor's death. 
 
 The Kansas City Star gives an interesting 
 little story of a tiny girl in that city who was 
 returning home from an all-day visit somewhere, 
 and had taken a Westport ear. Her lap was full 
 of old-fashioned flowers which she cherished with 
 peculiar pride. 
 
 Everything was of interest to this small person, 
 and she bobbled and squirmed about in her 
 endeavor to miss nothing that was going on in the 
 street or in the car. After a while she became 
 satisfied with the life about her and settled down 
 in quiet contentment.
 
 66 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 She had not long been thus, and the man across 
 the aisle opened his paper and had forgotten her, 
 when she began to sing softly to herself. At first 
 the man couldn't catch the tune, much less the 
 words. So he pretended to be interested in his 
 paper. Presently she grew bolder, or more forget- 
 ful of her surroundings, for in a sweet little 
 treble came the song, clear and bold, "My 
 Country, 'tis of Thee." She was just starting on 
 the verse : 
 
 "My native country, thee, 
 Land of the noble free, 
 
 Thy name I love; 
 I love thy rocks and rills, 
 Thy woods and templed hills : 
 My heart with rapture thrills 
 
 Like that above." 
 
 Then she started on the third verse, this time a 
 little louder. The men all about her dropped their 
 tiresome discussions of the war and business and 
 troubles and listened to her : 
 
 "Let music swell the breeze, 
 And ring from all the trees, 
 Sweet freedom's song." 
 
 The whole car was listening to her now. 
 Some men smiled, others had moist eyes, a few 
 slapped their knees appreciatively and muttered, 
 "Isn't that o-reat ?"
 
 MY COUNTRY, TIS OF THEE. 67 
 
 On she went to the end, totally oblivious to 
 everyone. Presently talk began again, and men 
 settled down to ordinary thoughts, but all through 
 them rang the dear old tune of "America," and 
 everyone felt uplifted because a little girl knew all 
 the words of our national hymn and delighted to 
 sing them. 
 
 It is passing strange that a national hymn, 
 beautiful and animating in its melody and simple 
 and inspiring in its poetry, should be so little 
 known among the American people. Twelve or 
 thirteen vears ago, when that magnificent English 
 steamship, the City of Berlin, then commanded 
 by Captain Watkins, was on a return trip from 
 Liverpool, the captain presided at an entertain- 
 ment given by the passengers for the benefit of the 
 seamen's fund. One interesting feature of the 
 program was the singing of national songs. 
 "God Save the Queen" was sung with wonderful 
 power and feeling, and then Captain Watkins 
 suggested that "America'' should be sung out of 
 courtesy to the many well-known Americans 
 aboard. After an outburst of applause. 
 
 "My country, 'tis of hee, 
 Sweet land of liberty," 
 
 rose in full chorus. But at the close of the fourth 
 
 line the words grew fainter and fainter, and when 
 
 the end of the first verse was reached, onlv three
 
 68 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 voices were heard, and one of them was the gallant 
 English captain bravely striving as best he could 
 to sing what is called our national hymn, which 
 the American passengers evidently could not sing. 
 In 1889, The Christian Union, since changed 
 to The Outlook, said that if the patriotism 
 of the Americans is to be measured by their 
 familiarity with the words of our national 
 hymn, then some other motive than "love of 
 country" would save the nation were its freedom 
 imperiled. It then gave the following striking 
 incident : "On Decoration day about one hundred 
 women were assembled in the parlors of one of the 
 women's clubs of Xew York. The first number on 
 the program was the national hymn, to be sung by 
 the audience. The first verse was sung, after the 
 first two lines, with firmness, the interlude was 
 played and the first chord to begin the second verse 
 given. There was perfect silence, except from the 
 piano, which was under the hands of a master. 
 Again the chord was struck, when a venturesome 
 soul struck wildly into the first line of the third 
 verse. Each woman gained courage and began 
 independently wherever she chanced to remember 
 a word, and the verse was sung in what was practi- 
 cally Volapiik, for each mumbled the words to 
 hide her ignorance of what the rest were singing.
 
 MY COUNTRY, TIS OF THEE. 69 
 
 Imagine that happening to a body of German 
 women ! The moment that soul-stirring 'Watch 
 on the Rhine' was started it would roll heaven- 
 wards, in sound if not in music. The French 
 woman would not hesitate, but boldly, firmly 
 would sing the national hymn, living in imagin- 
 ation the history of her country as she sang it, 
 while every form would respond to the command, 
 'To victory or death' ! and an army of women 
 would seem possible. The English woman would 
 sing her national hymn more coldly, perhaps, but 
 would consider herself a traitor were she not able 
 to sing the praises of her Queen. What is the 
 reason that an American audience stumbles and 
 mumbles through the national hymn ? The first 
 verse can be counted as familiar, but beyond that 
 the hymn is a failure. The intelligence of the 
 audience has nothing to do with it. Is there not 
 a moral force in the sentiment expressed in our 
 hymn that would make us all feel more strongly 
 a love of country if we could, when we come 
 together, form a common bond of sympathy, a 
 union of voice and heart I Every American 
 woman should consider it her duty to know the 
 words of our national hymn, and feel them, she 
 should consider it. a part of her duty that every 
 child brought under her influence should know 
 the words and understand their meaning."
 
 70 STOKIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 The power of patriotic songs over men who 
 have been called to march and fight, and suffer 
 and die, for the cause of liberty and the Union, has 
 been pathetically illustrated thousands of times. 
 Among the Americans severely wounded in the 
 campaign before Santiago, in the war with Spain, 
 was Edward Marshall, the young and brilliant cor- 
 respondent of The Xew York Journal. While 
 lying in a hospital in ISTew York City, where he 
 received treatment for his wounds, he dictated an 
 article for the September number of Scribner's 
 Magazine, in which he gave the following picture 
 in the field hospital at Guasimas : 
 
 "There is one incident which shines out in my 
 memory above all others as I lie in a Xew York 
 hospital writing. It was just after the battle near 
 Santiago, on the 24th of June. It was in the field 
 hospital, and a continual chorus of moans rose 
 through the tree branches overhead. Amputation 
 and death stared its members in their gloomy faces. 
 Suddenly, a voice starred softly: 
 
 'My country, 'tis of thee. 
 Sweet land of liberty, 
 Of thee I sing.' 
 
 Others then took up the lines : 
 
 'Land where my fathers died, 
 Land of the pilgrim's pride '
 
 MY COUNTRY, TIS OF THEE. 71 
 
 "The quivering, quavering chorus, punctuated 
 by groans, and made spasmodic by pain, trembled 
 up from that little group of wounded Americans 
 in the midst of the Cuban solitude the pluckiest, 
 most heartfelt song that human beings ever sang. 
 
 "But there was one voice that did not quite 
 keep up with the others. It was so weak that it 
 hardly could be heard until all the rest had finished 
 with the line : 
 
 'Let freedom ring.' 
 
 "Then halting, struggling, faint, it repeated 
 slowly : 
 
 'Land- of the pilgrims'- pride, 
 Let freedom .' 
 
 "The last word was a woeful cry. One more 
 son had died as died the fathers.'' 
 
 Notk. Shortly after the Spanish- American War. Miss 
 Helen Miller Gould, distinguished for her philanthropy and 
 patriotism, distributed fifty thousand copies of "My Country, 
 'tis of Thee," each copy being embellished with a line portrait 
 of Dr. Smith. Miss Gould says all good Americans should be 
 familiar with the hymn, and she commends the suggestion of 
 having a Church service on the Fourth of .Inly, with an appro- 
 priate address, and the singing of such songs as "America" and 
 "The Star Spangled Banner."
 
 CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 "COLUMBIA, THE GEM OF THE OCEAN." 
 
 ASOi^TG of great merit, though infrequently 
 used compared with patriotic songs of a later 
 date, is "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean." 
 In Mr. S. J. Adair Fitz-Gerald's "Stories of 
 Famous Songs," we are told that it was written 
 by Timothy Dwight, an ancestor of the famous 
 president of Yale University. How the author of 
 so excellent a book should drift so far from facts 
 in writing the story of the song, is inexplicable. 
 In a book published many years ago, entitled 
 "Airs of Many Lands," by John Philip Sousa, the 
 authorship of the song is given to David T. Shaw. 
 Mr. Sousa also adds that the music is an old Eng- 
 lish air, and the original words began, "Britannia, 
 the Pride of the Ocean," and that in 1852 an 
 American version was printed, beginning, "Colum- 
 bia, the Land of the Brave." It is remarked by
 
 'COLUMBIA, THE GEM OF THE OCEAN." 73 
 
 musical critics that there can be no question as to 
 the English origin of the song, for it could not pos- 
 sibly, they argue, have been written for America. 
 "An island," says the doughty Bookbuyer, "might 
 be called 'the gem of the ocean,' but the poorest 
 poet that ever wrote would not thus designate a 
 continent." 
 
 The authorship of the song has been in dispute 
 for a long time, and in many of the music books 
 the credit of writing it is given to Mr. Shaw. But 
 a little over twenty years ago Rear-Admiral 
 Preble, who was then preparing the first edition 
 of "The Flag of the United States," received a 
 letter from Mr. Thomas a Becket, which showed 
 that the name and idea of "Columbia, the Gem of 
 the Ocean," originated with David T. Shaw, but 
 that the words and music, as printed and sung, 
 were written and composed by Mr. a Becket. As 
 the song is entitled to a permanent place among 
 our great national hymns, it is worthy of having 
 its history correctly written. The letter from 
 Mr. a Becket was dated at Philadelphia, December 
 16, 1876, and the incidents that led up to the mak- 
 ing of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," are as 
 follows : 
 
 "In the fall of 1843, being then engaged as an 
 actor at the Chestnut Street Theater in this city,
 
 74 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 I was waited upon by Mr. D. T. Shaw with the re- 
 quest that I would write him a song for his benefit 
 night. He produced some patriotic lines, but I 
 found them ungrammatical, and so deficient in 
 measure as to be totally unfit to be adapted to 
 music. We adjourned to the house of a friend, 
 and I there wrote the two first verses in pencil, 
 and composed the melody on the piano. On reach- 
 ing home, I added the third verse, wrote the sym- 
 phonies and arrangements, made a fair copy, and 
 gave it to Mr. Shaw, requesting him not to sell or 
 give a copy. A few weeks later I left for Xew 
 Orleans, and was much surprised to see a published 
 copy, entitled 'Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,' 
 written, composed and sung by David T. Shaw, 
 and arranged by T. a Becket, Esq. On my return 
 to Philadelphia, I waited upon Mr. Willig, the 
 publisher, who told me that he had purchased the 
 song from Mr. Shaw. I produced the original 
 copy in pencil, and claimed the copyright, which 
 Mr. Willig admitted. I then made arrangements 
 with Mr. T. Osborn to publish the song in partner- 
 ship; and within a week it appeared under its 
 proper title, 'Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,' 
 written and composed by T. a Becket, and sung 
 by I). T. Shaw. Mr. E. L. Davenport, the emi- 
 nent actor, sana - the sons nightlv in London for
 
 COLUMBIA, THE GEM OF THE OCEAN. 75 
 
 some weeks ; it became very popular, and was pub- 
 lished without authority there under the title of 
 'Britannia, the Gem/ etc. I visited London in 
 1847, and found the song claimed as an English 
 composition. (Perhaps it is, I being an English- 
 man by birth. ) During my absence from America, 
 the land of my adoption, Osborn failed in busi- 
 ness, and the plates of the song were sold to Mr. 
 Benteen, of Baltimore. Thus it went out of my 
 possession, much to my regret and loss." 
 The following is the song complete : 
 
 Columbia, the gem of the ocean. 
 
 The home of the brave and the free ; 
 The shrine of eacli patriot's devotion 
 
 A world offers homage to thee. 
 Thy mandates make heroes assemble 
 When liberty's form stands in view. 
 Thy banners make tyranny tremble 
 
 When borne by the red, white, and blue. 
 When borne by the red, white, and blue, 
 When borne by the red, white, and blue, 
 Thy banners make tyranny tremble 
 When borne by the red, white, and blue. 
 
 When war winged its wide desolation. 
 
 And threaten'd the land to deform, 
 The ark then of freedom's foundation, 
 
 Columbia rode safe through the storm; 
 With her garlands of viet'ry around her, 
 
 When so proudly she bore her brave crew, 
 With her flag proudly floating before her, 
 
 The boast of the red, white, and blue.
 
 76 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 The boast of the red, white, and blue, 
 The boast of the red, white, and blue, 
 
 With her flag proudly floating before her, 
 The boast of the red, white, and blue. 
 
 The wine cup, the wine cup, bring hither, 
 
 And fill you it true to the brim, 
 May the wreaths they have won never wither, 
 
 Nor the star of their glory grow dim. 
 May the service united ne'er sever, 
 
 But they to their colors prove true, 
 The army and navy forever, 
 
 Three cheers for the red, white, and blue. 
 Three cheers for the red, white, and blue, 
 Three cheers for the red, white, and blue, 
 The army and navy forever, 
 Three cheers for the red, white, and blue.
 
 JOHN HKOWX,
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FATHERLESS SONG OF JOHN BROWN'S BODY. 
 
 WHEN the flag was shot down at Sumter the 
 whole country quivered with new emotion. 
 As I have already said, the feeling of great 
 numbers always tends to utterance in song. The 
 people of the North wanted to sing, but there was 
 no national anthem which seemed to fit the occa- 
 sion. The great theme of the war called for a new 
 song, one which would strike a chord that had not 
 yet been touched. The time had come for fresh 
 lyrics, for a new generation of men some out- 
 burst of a fiery, patriotic sentiment which would 
 quickly take deep root in the hearts of the people. 
 No sooner, therefore, had the belching guns at 
 Sumter proclaimed that civil war was our mis- 
 fortune, than there came into being, as if by magic 
 and inspiration, a new, strange song, with its weird 
 bur enchanting chorus, an outburst of the genius
 
 78 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 of the nation the song that kept in unison with 
 the steady tramp of the armies on their way to 
 fields of battle. 
 
 The John Brown song has been called a ''spon- 
 taneous generation of the uprising of the North," 
 the refrain of which became the marching song 
 of the Union in the very earliest months of the 
 war. When the war cloud had overshadowed the 
 loyal states, there was started in Boston harbor, 
 as if it were a bold and defiant reply to the Con- 
 federate guns at Charleston, the song of "John 
 Brown's Body;" and the almost religious enthusi- 
 asm of the words so blended with the exciting 
 tread of the music, as to make it an irresistible 
 force in arousing a spirit of patriotism among the 
 soldiers. It has a grim, uncouth melody, and a 
 commanding refrain created, somehow, to enshrine 
 the faith of the loyal states and the beneficence to 
 humanity of the great civil war. The late Richard 
 Henry Dana, Jr., author of that famous little 
 book, "Two Years Before the Mast," writing of 
 this nondescript, fatherless song, 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
 
 JOHN BROWN S BODY. 79 
 
 cadences men would march to battle by tens of 
 thousands." 
 
 It is a curious fact that a war song so gifted 
 with power for victory as that of '"John Brown's 
 Body," should have an origin so disputed and in- 
 volved. Its beginning may not extend into dim 
 antiquity, like the story of "Yankee Doodle," but 
 there is so much of the unknown about both words 
 and music, that historians have been extremely 
 perplexed in the effort to give the public facts, 
 rather than legend and fiction, as to the origin of 
 the song. Some writers and there are no visible 
 reasons why their story is not as believable as that 
 of anybody else claim that the music was 
 adapted and the words paraphrased from an old 
 Methodist camp-meeting hymn, which drew its 
 form and tune in turn from a domestic ballad of 
 a thousand years ago, just as Luther, or, more 
 properly, William Franck, found "Old Hundred" 
 in the ancient and simple home music of the 
 peasantry. 
 
 Some twenty-five years ago there was a long 
 discussion in the Xc-w York and Boston papers as 
 to who should be credited with the authorship of 
 this famous song of the Rebellion. But the vol- 
 uminous correspondence did not disentangle his- 
 tory from theory and speculation.
 
 80 STORIES OF GEEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 When the Twelfth Massachusetts infantry 
 commanded by Colonel Fletcher Webster, son of 
 Daniel Webster was stationed at Fort Warren, 
 in Boston harbor, in the spring of 1861, a quartette 
 belonging to the Second battalion amused them- 
 selves by singing: 
 
 "John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave. 
 His soul is marching on. 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah, 
 His soul is marching on." 
 
 This was the only stanza known when the quar- 
 tette introduced the song at Fort Warren. In a 
 few weeks it developed into the following : 
 
 "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, 
 John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, 
 John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, 
 His soul is marching on. 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 His soul is marching on," 
 
 which was adopted by the army and became the 
 first stanza of the great war song which has been 
 many times heard around the world. The words 
 have been attributed to Mr. Charles S. Hall, of 
 Charlestown, Mass., and in a letter to The Boston 
 Transcript, in 1874, he claims to have written 
 most, of the stanzas. Mr. Hall also says that the 
 music set to the words was found bv Mr. James
 
 JOHN BROWN S BODY. 81 
 
 E. Greenleaf, of Charlestown, in the archives of 
 the church to which he was organist. The words 
 of which Mr. Hall is said to be the author, and 
 which constitute the original John Brown song, 
 and adopted by the Grand Army of the Republic, 
 are as follows : 
 
 John Brown's body lies a mould'ring in the grave, 
 John Brown's body lies a mould'ring in the grave, 
 John Brown's body lies a mould'ring in the grave, 
 His soul is marching on ! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 His soul is marching on. 
 
 The stars of heaven are looking kindly down, 
 The stars of heaven are looking kindly down, 
 The stars of heaven are looking kindly down, 
 On the grave of old John Brown! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah, etc. 
 
 He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord, 
 He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord, 
 He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord! 
 His soul is marching on! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah, etc. 
 
 John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back, 
 John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back, 
 John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back! 
 His soul is marching on! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah, etc. 
 
 The tune was wonderfully catching, and as 
 Brander Matthews has said in The Century, there
 
 82 STORIES OF GEEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 was no lack of poets to furnish words for the 
 music. Henry Howard Brownell, the gifted poet 
 of the civil war the warm friend of Admiral Far- 
 ragut and Oliver Wendell Holmes soon after 
 the war broke out, wrote a poem of five stanzas, 
 and called it, "Words That Can Be Sung to the 
 'Hallelujah Chorus/ " the first of which was : 
 
 "Old John Brown lies a-mould'ring in the grave, 
 Old John Brown lies slumbering in his grave 
 But John Brown's soul is marching with the brave, 
 His soul is marching on. 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 His soul is marching on." 
 
 The remaining stanzas were so irregular in 
 meter that they could not be sung to the John 
 Brown tune without considerable patchwork, and 
 the poem, though in many respects meritorious, 
 was never adopted by the people. 
 
 A far better poem fine in sentiment, perfect 
 in meter, and smooth in rhythm is that written 
 by Miss Edna 1). Proctor. With the exception of 
 Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Repub- 
 lic," of which I shall speak at length further on, 
 it is the best poem ever adapted to the John Brown 
 air. It was written shortly after Sumter fell, and 
 why it did not become the song of the people,
 
 JOHN BROWN S BODY. 83 
 
 rather than the words attributed to Mr. Hall, is 
 a psychological problem difficult to solve. The 
 words are so worthy of being repeated that I give 
 them in full : 
 
 John Brown died on the scaffold for the slave; 
 Dark was the hour when we dug his hallowed grave; 
 Now God avenges the life he gladly gave, 
 Freedom reigns to-day! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah ! 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah ! 
 Freedom reigns to-day ! 
 
 John Brown sowed, and his harvesters are we ; 
 Honor to him who has made the bondmen free; 
 Loved evermore shall our noble leader be. 
 Freedom reigns to-day! 
 
 John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave; 
 Bright o'er the sod let the starry banner wave; 
 Lo ! for the million he periled all to save. 
 Freedom reigns to-day! 
 
 John Brown's soul through the world is marching on ; 
 Hail to the hour when oppression shall be gone; 
 All men will sing in the better age's dawn. 
 Freedom reigns to-day! 
 
 John Brown dwells where the battle strife is o'er; 
 Hate cannot harm him, nor sorrow stir him more; 
 Earth will remember the martyrdom he bore, 
 Freedom reigns to-day! 
 
 John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave; 
 John Brown lives in tin- triumph of the brave; 
 John Brown's soul not a higher joy can crave, 
 Freedom reijjns to-dav!
 
 84 STOEIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 As to the origin of the tune, there is a story 
 told that in 1856, one William Steffe, of Phila- 
 delphia, who had somewhat of a local reputation 
 as a composer of light music, was requested to fur- 
 nish a fire company at Charleston, S. C, an air 
 to some words, the chorus of which began 
 
 "Say, bummers, will you meet us?" 
 
 In response to the wishes of the firemen, Mr. Steffe 
 composed the tune now known as "John Brown." 
 The happy mingling of the words and music made 
 the song very popular, and finally the tune was 
 taken up by the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
 tion in the East, and set to the words well known 
 forty years ago 
 
 "Say, brothers, will you meet us, 
 Say, brothers, will you meet us, 
 Say, brothers, will you meet us, 
 
 On Canaan's happy shore? 
 By the grace of God we'll meet you, 
 By the grace of God we'll meet you. 
 By the grace of God we'll meet you, 
 
 Where parting is no more." 
 
 This hymn is found in the supplement to The 
 Plymouth Collection, compiled by Henry Ward 
 Beecher, and printed at some period between 1855 
 and I860; and a correspondent in The Boston 
 Journal, in 1874, says the tune, with only a few
 
 JOHN BROWN S BODY. 85 
 
 changes, was used by the Miller ites in 1843 to the 
 words 
 
 "We'll see the angels coming 
 Through the old church yards, 
 Shouting through the air 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah." 
 
 It seems that the time was quite well known 
 among the neg*roes of the South during the civil 
 war. Lieutenant Chandler, writing on Sherman's 
 march to the sea, says that when a halt was made 
 at Shady Dale, in Georgia, the band struck up 
 "John Brown's Body," when, to the amusement 
 and surprise of the soldiers, a number of negro 
 girls came out from the houses, which were sup- 
 posed to be deserted, and, forming in a circle 
 around the band, danced in perfect time, and in a 
 grave and dignified manner, as if influenced by 
 some magical or religions ceremony. When the 
 tune had ceased, the girls quietly returned to their 
 cabins without a smile on their faces to disturb 
 the gravity of their deportment ; and no other tune 
 the band might play could induce them to dance. 
 It was learned from the older negroes that the air 
 was known among them as the "wedding tune," 
 that it had no connection with any hymn or song, 
 and that the colored girls were taught that they 
 must dance whenever they heard it played, or they
 
 86 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 would never be married. It is not improbable 
 that it is one of those strange voodoo airs, so mys- 
 terious in their origin as to baffle historians. 
 
 There is abundant evidence to prove that the 
 tune of "John Brown" was known in Boston some 
 time before it was snng at Fort Warren. The most 
 significant event just before the outbreak of the 
 Rebellion, one which sent a wave of excitement 
 over the entire JNTorth, was the hanging of John 
 Brown on the 2d of December, 1859. The feeling 
 which that execution roused in Massachusetts 
 found relief in a monstrous mass meeting held at 
 Faneuil hall. John A. Andrew 7 , a man whose phil- 
 anthropy and loyalty will long enrich the pages 
 of American history, was at the time governor of 
 the state. He took a deep interest in that memo- 
 rable meeting, and on that night vast crowds of 
 young men and boys marched through the streets 
 of Boston, singing, in contempt of the governor 
 and of the great gathering, the improvised w r ords 
 to the "John Brown" air 
 
 "Tell John Andrew that John Brown is dead, 
 Tell John Andrew that John Brown is dead, 
 Tell John Andrew that John Brown is dead, 
 And salt won't save him now." 
 
 The "John Brown" song as used in the army 
 was first sung by Webster's famous regiment in
 
 JOHN BROWN S BODY. 87 
 
 Boston on the 18th of July, 1861, with one thou- 
 sand and forty voices on the chorus. The occa- 
 sion was the presentation of a flag to the regiment 
 by the Hon. Edward Everett. A few days later 
 the Twelfth started for the front, and on its way 
 electrified J\ T ew York with the song; three days 
 afterwards it startled Baltimore; and another ex- 
 ample of the terrible sarcasm of fate was witnessed 
 when the regiment, on the 1st of March, 1862, 
 formed a hollow square around the very spot on 
 which John Brown was executed at Charlestown, 
 Va., and these "Websters" sang with a power and 
 feeling never heard before 
 
 "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave. 
 His soul is marching on." 
 
 The Twelfth Massachusetts, commanded by 
 Colonel Webster, had made the song of "John 
 Brown'' popular in the army. They always sang 
 it with mighty unction. The colonel was killed 
 in the second battle of Bull Run, August 30, 1862, 
 and there is pathos in the story that after the 
 tragedy of that day the regiment never again sang 
 of "Old John Brown." In July, 1864, the term 
 of enlistment expired, and the Twelfth returned 
 to Boston. It left the city three years before with 
 a numerical strength of one thousand and fortv.
 
 88 STOKIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 but the waste of disease, and the shot and shell of 
 many battles made frightful mortality among the 
 men ; and the sad remnant of the once famous regi- 
 ment made the homeward march through the 
 streets of Boston with only eighty-five men. The 
 colors were tattered, the boys stood in mournful 
 evidence of hard service, and while they received 
 a royal welcome by a vast, patriotic multitude, and 
 shout after shout went up for "John Brown's 
 Body," these brave heroes, silently, but with a sol- 
 dierly tread, marched to the barracks, and the 
 "Websters," having finished their work, "passed 
 into history." 
 
 Mr. Brander Matthews is authority for the 
 story that after the performance of that great 
 chorus, "Glory to God on High," from Mozart's 
 Twelfth Mass, on the first day of the Boston Peace 
 Jubilee, an old soldier of the Webster regiment 
 took occasion to shake hands with Mr. Gilmore, 
 and to tender his congratulations on the success of 
 the undertaking, remarking that for his part what 
 he liked best was the piece called the "Twelfth 
 Massachusetts." 
 
 The song of "John Brown's Body" was indeed 
 a blast of triumph. The massive simplicity of the 
 tune stirred the blood of the people like a blare of 
 a trumpet. When Webster's regiment marched
 
 JOHN BROWN S BODY. 89 
 
 down Broadway, New York, July 24, 1861, on 
 their way to battle and victory, singing "Old John 
 Brown" as a marching song, the scene was soul- 
 stirring surpassing description. The effect was 
 supreme. All over the North, in all Federal 
 camps, the refrain, with its "majestic plainness in 
 the rhythm like the beating of mighty hammers," 
 spread as if by enchantment, and it became the 
 battle-cry of hundreds of thousands and the Mar- 
 seillaise of Emancipation. 
 
 Many songs may come and go with the occa- 
 sions that produce them, but "Old John Brown" 
 will remain. Travelers say that they have heard 
 it among the common people of almost every clime 
 on earth, in regions where newspapers never go, 
 and where the story of John Brown's martyrdom 
 could find its way only by some sort of special 
 providence. It is not a meritorious song in point 
 of construction, but it is strangely effective, and 
 the explanation is that back of the song lies the 
 sublime truth that the man whom it celebrates died 
 for men, and immortalized his name by perform- 
 ing, as ho saw it, a service for human liberty. 
 "His soul is marching on." "In that solemn and 
 significant refrain is the whole story; and it is a 
 story that touches the human heart wherever there 
 is love of right, of justice and of goodness."
 
 90 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 The song has been a marvelous inspiration, and 
 among the many thrilling experiences with which 
 it has been associated, none has been more striking 
 than that related by Admiral Schley in describing 
 the destruction of Cervera's fleet off Santiago, on 
 Sunday, July 3, 1898. Speaking of the men be- 
 hind the guns, "those noble, silent, effective work- 
 ers" the firemen and coal-heavers he tells of 
 their singing "John Brown's Body" with wonder- 
 ful meaning as they shoveled coal in the great fur- 
 naces that carried the flagship Brooklyn to such a 
 splendid victory. 
 
 John Habberton, the author of that popular 
 book, "Helen's Babies" "embracing the record 
 for a single day of the doings of a brace of boys 
 of whom the author is half owner" gives his im- 
 pression of this song: "It has wonderful influ- 
 ence over me. I heard it in western camp meet- 
 ings and negro cabins when T was a boy, and saw 
 the Twelfth Massachusetts march down Broadway, 
 singing the same air during a rush to the front in 
 the early days of the war. I heard it sung by 
 warrior tongues in nearly every Southern state; 
 my old brigade sung it softly, but with a swing 
 that was terrible in its earnestness, as they lay 
 behind their stacks of arms, just before going into 
 action. I have heard it played over the graves
 
 JOHN BROWN S BODY. 91 
 
 of many a dead comrade, the semi-mutinous the 
 cavalry became peaceful and patriotic again as 
 their bandmaster played the old air, after having 
 asked permission to try his hand on them ; it is the 
 tune that burst forth spontaneously in our 
 barracks on that glorious morning when we learned 
 that the war was over, and it was sung with words 
 adapted to the occasion by some rebel friends of 
 mine on our first social meeting after the war." 
 
 On the 16th of November, 1864, General 
 Sherman's magnificent army of 55,300 men began 
 the famous march from Atlanta to the sea. Be- 
 hind this splendidly organized army, which 
 had won so many brilliant victories, lay 
 Atlanta, "'smouldering and in ruins, the black 
 smoke rising high in the air and hanging 
 like a pall over the ill-fated city." When 
 the Fourteenth corps, on the right of the left 
 wing, moved quickly in the grand column, one 
 of the bands struck up "John Brown's Body." 
 The men caught up the refrain "Glory, glory, 
 hallelujah," and it is doubtful if at any other 
 time during the civil war. or on any occasion since. 
 the simple but significant words were sung with 
 bolder spirit or with mightier meaning than on the 
 beginning of the march that has been immortal- 
 ized in sonc and siorv. General Sherman after-
 
 92 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 wards said that the incident was one of the most 
 remarkable illustrations of the influence of song 
 he had ever known. 
 
 This, in part, is the story of one of the most 
 mystical songs of any country or age. Why "the 
 undistinguishable name of John Brown should 
 have been whispered by four million slaves, and 
 sung wherever the English language is spoken, or 
 incorporated into an anthem" that thrilled great 
 armies with delight and inspiration, will remain 
 in the realm of mystery. 
 
 Note. Since the first edition of this work was put to press, 
 I see that John S. Wise (whose father was Governor of Virginia 
 at the time John Brown was hanged), says in his volume. The 
 End of an Era, p. 136 : "The solemn swell of John Brown's 
 Body, as sung by the Federal troops, is only an adaptation of a 
 favorite camp-meeting hymn which I often heard the negroes 
 sing as they worked in the fields, long before the days of John 
 Brown. The old words were : 
 
 'My poor body lies a-mouldering in the clay, 
 'My poor body lies a-mouldering in the clay, 
 'My poor body lies a-mouldering in the clay, 
 
 While my soul goes marching on.' 
 "Refrain : 'Glory, glory, hallelujah, etc.. 
 
 As my soul goes marching on." "
 
 GEORGE F. ROOT.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GEORGE F. ROOT AND HIS BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM. 
 
 IT is to the honor of this sweet land of liberty 
 that it has reared up men adequate to every 
 crisis, however great. When a soldier was 
 needed to fight a trying war, and a statesman to lay 
 the foundation of a Republic, Washington the 
 imperial character heeded the stern voice of duty 
 and wrested victory from the most powerful nation 
 on earth. 
 
 When America called for orators to defend the 
 constitution and plead the cause of human liberty, 
 there rang out the clarion-like voices of Webster, 
 Clay, Wendell Phillips, Garfield and Beecher. 
 
 When rebellion threatened the life of the na- 
 tion and the political sky was red with passion, 
 and a patriot and a genius was wanted to lead a 
 brave people through the storm of war and clouds 
 of uncertainty, a product of hardship and toil at
 
 94 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 once stood before the gaze of the civilized world 
 a man ever righteous in purpose, amazing in wis- 
 dom, glorious in his human-ness of nature, sublime 
 in his faith in men Lincoln, the loftiest type of 
 American civilization. 
 
 When the call went forth for men to save the 
 country and its flag, in quick response came the 
 sturdy warrior Sherman, and the fighting Sheri- 
 dan ; and there came from poverty and obscurity, 
 a man of indomitable energy, silent in words, but 
 marvelous in execution, supreme in every supreme 
 moment, as modest as a maiden but greater than 
 the Caesars General Grant, who, measured by 
 what he did, was the greatest commander that ever 
 led an army to victory. 
 
 When the grand army of volunteers rallied for 
 liberty and the Union, and the homes of the people 
 and the boys in battle called for songs of hope 
 which should make every chord of the soul vibrate 
 and give promise of victory, among Fortune's best 
 gifts were George F. Root, Henry (J. Work, and 
 Julia Ward Howe the great patriotic singers of 
 the century. 
 
 There has never been an emergency without a 
 man or woman to meet it. And it has been said 
 that "God chooses His own instruments for the 
 development, of the Divine problem, and while men
 
 THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM. 
 
 may come and go, and try and fail, the right man 
 to perform the right service is always certain to 
 appear at the right time." This truth has been 
 demonstrated in every trying crisis in our national 
 history from Washington in the Revolution to 
 McKinley at the White House, Dewey at Ma- 
 nila and Schley at Santiago. And when President 
 Lincoln issued his second call for troops in the 
 summer of 1861, the emergency had come when 
 the Union army needed a battle cry of freedom, 
 and George F. Root, living in Chicago, was deeply 
 impressed with the mighty significance of the proc- 
 lamation, and one afternoon he caught the spirit 
 of the hour and there began to evolve in his mind 
 the sentiment of a rallying song, and in an out- 
 burst of patriotic fervor there came the words and 
 music of that soul-stirring and pulse-quickening 
 battle hymn : 
 
 Yes. we'll rally round the flag, boys, 
 
 We'll rally once again, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom. 
 We will rally from the hillside, 
 
 We will rally from the plain, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom. 
 
 CHOKUS. 
 
 The Union forever! Hurrah, boy.-, hurrah! 
 Down with the traitors, up with the -tars, 
 While we rally round the flag, boys, 
 Rally once again, 
 Shouting the battle crv of freedom.
 
 9 6 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 We are springing to the call 
 
 Of our brothers gone before, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom, 
 And we'll fill the vacant ranks 
 
 With a million freemen more, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom. 
 
 We will welcome to our numbers 
 
 The loyal, true and brave, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom, 
 And altho' they may be poor, 
 
 Not a man shall be a slave, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom. 
 
 So we're springing to the call 
 
 From the East and from the West, 
 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom, 
 
 And we'll hurl the rebel crew 
 From the land we love the best, 
 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom. 
 
 The next evening, says Mr. Root in his in- 
 teresting "Story of a Musical Life," the famous 
 Lumbard brothers Jules and Frank, the great 
 singers of the war were to sing at a meeting to 
 be held in the Chicago Court House square. Mr. 
 Root gave them the "Battle Cry of Freedom." 
 The magnificent voices of the brothers were elec- 
 trifying ; and in trumpet-like tones the refrain 
 
 "The Union forever! Hurrah, boy?, hurrah!" 
 
 spread as if impelled by some magnetic influence, 
 and almost instantly the grand chorus rose in 
 miffhtv music from the vast multitude. The song
 
 THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM. 97 
 
 struck fire, and leaped into widespread popularity 
 and usefulness. Only a few days after the song 
 was written a monstrous war-meeting was held in 
 Union Square, .New York. The excitement ran 
 high, and the emotion was intense. The Hutchin- 
 son family sang the "Battle Cry of Freedom." 
 The immense throng of listeners were aroused to 
 the highest pitch of exaltation of soul. The song 
 was sung again and again, and the great audience 
 caught up the refrain, and it proved a resistless 
 force in swelling the ranks of the army. ISTo other 
 war song was sung with holder patriotism or with 
 a more triumphant passion of the soul. It seemed 
 to mount up as if on the wings of magic, and was 
 carried over all the North, and into all camps 
 where the Stars and Stripes floated. It was often 
 ordered to be sung as the men marched into action ; 
 and more than once its strains rose on the battle- 
 field to stimulate courage. 
 
 There is a stirring illustration of how this song 
 saved a battle, which I find in Brainard's "Our 
 War Songs, Xorth and South/' During the ter- 
 rible battle of the Wilderness on the Gth of May, 
 1864, a brigade of the Ninth Army Corps, having 
 broken the enemy's line by an assault, became ex- 
 posed to a flank attack, and with heavy loss were 
 driven back in disorder. Thev retreated but a
 
 98 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 few hundred yards, however, when they re-formed, 
 and again confronted the enemy. Just then some 
 gallant fellow an unknown hero in the Forty- 
 fifth Pennsylvania, with a head filled with sense 
 and a heart full of courage and song, began to sing : 
 
 "We'll rally round the flag, boys, 
 Rally once again, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom." 
 
 The refrain was caught up by the entire regi- 
 ment, and also by the regiments next in line. The 
 air was filled with the crackle and smoke of the 
 burning underbrush; the pitiful cries of the 
 wounded, the rattle of musketry, and the wild 
 shouts of command, gave intense excitement to the 
 scene ; but above all, answering the exalted yell of 
 the enemy, rose supreme the inspiring chorus 
 
 "The Union forever ! Hurrah, boys, hurrah ! 
 Down with the traitors, up with the stars, 
 And we'll rally round the flag, boys, 
 Rally once again, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom." 
 
 What an impressive example of the power of 
 patriotic song in evoking from men, when charg- 
 ing in the very jaws of death, a resolute and a sing- 
 ing spirit ! 
 
 There is an influence beautiful and marvelous 
 in these songs of soul and war. Dr. H. IT. Bel- 
 field, formerly adjutant of a regiment of Iowa
 
 THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM. 99 
 
 cavalry, and afterwards principal of the Chicago 
 Manual Training School, relates an incident in 
 Dr. Root's "Story of a Musical Life," which, 
 briefly told, is that on the last day of July, in 1864. 
 some of our prisoners of war were taken to New- 
 man, Ga. The flag under which they had been 
 fighting had gone down in blood and death. The 
 Confederate flag was flying in temporary triumph 
 over this small company of Union soldiers who, 
 having obeyed orders they well knew would sacri- 
 fice themselves, had saved hundreds of their 
 comrades, and now were prisoners of war. They 
 were hungry, ragged, tired out, defeated, but full 
 of hope and song. When the inhabitants of the 
 town gathered about this little band of prisoners, 
 curious to know what the Yankee soldier looked 
 like, the brave, patriotic boys sang "Rally Round 
 the Flag." It might seem foolhardy to rouse the 
 Confederate town with such song, but the people 
 received it kindly, however, and called for more 
 songs ; but the poor fellows had had no food for a 
 whole day and begged for something to eat. Food 
 was brought them, and the prisoners repaid the 
 kindness by singing more of the battle songs of 
 the Union, which finally found expression in 
 cheers of good will. 
 
 Only those who were at the front, marching 1
 
 100 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 and battling for the flag and enduring all the hard- 
 ships of an active army life and entering into all 
 the painful uncertainties of war, can fully realize 
 how often the soldiers were cheered and inspired 
 by the words and tunes of patriotic zeal. 
 
 In the battle of Nashville a soldier was severely 
 wounded, and in the hospital, when he had come 
 from under the influence of chloroform, he felt that 
 his right arm was gone. He asked that it be 
 brought to him that he might see it once more. 
 Taking the cold fingers in his left hand, he said, 
 "Good-bye, old arm ; we have been a long time to- 
 gether; we must now part. You will never fire 
 another carbine or swing another saber for the 
 government. Good-bye." Great tears rolled down 
 his cheeks as the shattered arm was taken from his 
 sight. lie called for one of the songs of the Union, 
 and inspired by the music of patriotism, he said, 
 "Don't misunderstand me, doctor ; I don't regret 
 the arm is lost. I would rather have it torn from 
 my body than that a single star should be taken 
 from the flag." 
 
 I do not think that we shall know, this side of 
 eternity, how important the helpfulness and how 
 enduring the influence of these songs of war were. 
 A few years ago in a story, that has now become 
 quite familiar, written by Richard W. Browne for
 
 THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM. 101 
 
 The Century Magazine, he says that shortly after 
 Lee's surrender, a number of Union officers 
 assembled in Richmond one evening and sang some 
 favorite college songs. Directly across the street 
 was a house occupied by some Confederate officers, 
 and being so near by, the Union men deemed it 
 improper to sing army songs, as they did not wish 
 to lacerate the feelings of a fallen foe. But after 
 several beautiful college pieces had been sung, the 
 lady of the house where the Federals were stop- 
 ping, handed one of them a note which came from 
 the Confederate officers. It was a gracious request 
 that permission might be granted them to go over 
 and hear the Union men sing. Of course, consent 
 was gladly given, and the boys again sang some of 
 their glee songs. But one of the Confederate offi- 
 cers said in a kind tone: ''Gentlemen, you sing 
 delightfully ; but what we want to hear now are 
 some of your army songs." Then they sang with 
 force and zeal, "Marching Through Georgia," 
 "John Brown's Body," '"Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, 
 the Boys Are Marching," "Rally Round the Flag," 
 and finally "The Star Spangled Banner." And 
 even some of the Confederate feet were inspired 
 to beat time to these grand songs, as if they had 
 never stepped to any but the "music of the Union." 
 After the applause had subsided, one of the
 
 102 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Confederate officers exclaimed, "I tell you, gentle- 
 men, if we'd had your songs, we'd have whipped 
 you out of your boots. Who couldn't have marched 
 and fought with such songs as yours ? We had 
 nothing but a bastard 'Marseillaise,' 'Bonny Blue 
 Flag,' 'Dixie,' which are nothing but jigs, and 
 'Maryland, My Maryland,' the tune of which is 
 no more inspiring than the 'Dead March in Saul,' 
 while your Yankee songs are full of marching and 
 fighting." 
 
 There is great force in the remark of the Con- 
 federate officer as to the marching and fighting 
 power of the "Yankee" war songs. The songs of 
 the Union were songs of unquenchable patriotism ; 
 and evoked all the noble emotions in the soldier 
 and kept alive the spirit of mirth and hope. 
 
 The best natured soldiers on earth are those 
 who march under the folds of "Old Glory." Mr. 
 Brander Matthews, in The Century Magazine, 
 says the Federal soldiers never allowed pleasant 
 humor to desert him ; and in the hard tussle of the 
 civil war, when roads were muddy, marching 
 heavy, and the hardtack scarce, and tough enough 
 to be marked B. C, how often the gentle lines of 
 "Mary Had a Little Lamb" were snugly fitted to 
 the tune of the "Battle cry of freedom," and many 
 a regiment shortened a weary march, or made a 
 dull camp gladsome by singing
 
 THE BATTLE CKY OF FREEDOM. 103 
 
 "Mary had a little lamb, 
 
 Its fleece was white as snow, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom; 
 And everywhere that Mary went, 
 
 The lamb was sure to go, 
 Shouting the battle cry of freedom." 
 
 As a piece of poetry, the "Battle Cry of Free- 
 dom" may not have great merit, but as an expres- 
 sion of patriotism it is beyond all price. It is 
 great enough to gain enduring fame as a battle 
 song; great enough for volunteers to sing on 
 their marches from home in defense of the 
 Union; great enough to be on their lips 
 on going into battle ; great enough to be asso- 
 ciated with all the fierce struggles of the civil 
 war; and great enough to be sung by ten thousand 
 manly voices in a national convention that it 
 might rouse enthusiasm for the peerless soldier of 
 history. 
 
 The late Charles A. Dana, editor of The ISTew 
 York Sun, and Assistant secretary of war during 
 the Rebellion, said, a short time before his death, 
 in October, 1897, that Dr. Root did more to pre- 
 serve the Union than a great many brigadier-gen- 
 erals, and quite as much as some brigades. The 
 editor of The Musical Visitor, Mr. Murray, says 
 he heard the "Battle Cry of Freedom" sung in the 
 outer line of intrenchments before Petersburg,
 
 104 STORIES OF GKEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 within talking distance of the Confederate line of 
 battle, the men voicing the lines of the song with 
 remarkable enthusiasm Avhen they knew full well 
 that the very next minute "they might have to give 
 their lives for the Union they were fighting to 
 maintain." 
 
 Among many incidents connected with Dr. 
 Root's war songs, the one which touched him most 
 deeply is related in his delightful "Story of a 
 Musical Life." An Iowa regiment went in one 
 of the charges during the siege of Vicksburg eight 
 hundred strong, and came out with a terrible loss 
 of more than half their number. But the remnant 
 of the regiment left the battlefield waving their 
 torn and powder-stained flag singing 
 
 "Yes, we'll rally round the flag, boys." 
 
 Years after the war, the doctor held a musical 
 convention in Anamosa, Iowa, and one evening he 
 received a note, saying, "If the author of the 'Bat- 
 tle Cry of Freedom' would sing that song it would 
 gratify many soldiers in the audience who used to 
 sing it in the army." Before singing the song, 
 Dr. Root related an incident of the charge of the 
 Iowa regiment, when some one shouted, "Here is 
 a soldier who lost an arm in that charge." And 
 at the doctor's request the veteran went forward
 
 THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM. 105 
 
 and stood upon the platform while the song was 
 being sung. He was a tall, fine-looking man, and 
 the mournful eloquence of the empty sleeve, and 
 the soul-thrilling lines of the "Battle Cry of Free- 
 dom" as sung by Dr. Root, brought tears to the 
 eyes of almost the entire audience. 
 
 Dr. Root was born in Sheffield, Mass., in 1820. 
 He came into the world with music in his soul. 
 The dream of his life was to be a musician. In 
 1858 he started a music business in Chicago. He 
 had composed that beautiful tune, "Shining 
 Shore," and several other well known tunes and 
 anthems prior to that time. His first war song 
 was the "Battle Cry of Freedom," the authorship 
 of which is fame enough for any one man. He 
 died August 7, 1S9 5. 
 
 Dr. Root played an important part in the war 
 for the Union. His songs were a great force 
 in the homes as well as in the field. They were 
 the most eloquent appeals for enlistments. They 
 touched the chords of patriotism as they had never 
 been touched before. They became the ruling 
 sentiment of the American people, and millions 
 rallied round the flag. Dr. Root had a greater 
 influence during the dark days of the war than 
 many men who happened to have their names 
 written among immortal heroes. His influence
 
 106 STORIES OF GEEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 through his songs was immeasurable in a special 
 time of need, and will still live, and while coming 
 generations "will not forget the song," they cannot 
 forget the singer. 
 
 On the afternoon of July 4, 1896, a vast audi- 
 ence of ten thousand assembled at the Coliseum in 
 Chicago, the occasion being a war song festival for 
 the benefit of the George F. Root monument fund. 
 It was a great day for the "Battle Cry of Free- 
 dom." Chicago's greatest singers took the solos, 
 and one thousand children sang in the choruses. 
 Mr. Jules Lumbard, the white-haired veteran, who 
 was first to sing that famous battle hymn thirty- 
 five years before, sang it at the Coliseum, and 
 every soul was thrilled by its new-born power. 
 Luther Laflin Mills, that superb orator, delivered 
 the oration, and one quotation therefrom will close 
 this chapter on the "Battle Cry of Freedom :" 
 
 "The story of the war songs of Root is the story 
 of the songs of every people. Cradle songs become 
 crystallized in human character ; home songs run- 
 ning through the memories of men are the thread 
 of gold which binds them to purity, and sacred 
 hymns once learned in childhood, and arousing the 
 dullest ear in after years, are a constant link be- 
 tween God and man. Songs are easy sermons. 
 Their power abides. The songs of George F. Root
 
 .HI. IS LUMBAKI), 
 run FIRST sim;i:i: ok "tiii: i:a in .1: CRY (w FREEDOM.
 
 THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM. 107 
 
 abide, and will remain in the memories and voices 
 of our people, not only as reminders of the nation's 
 heroic struggle for self-preservation, but as a con- 
 stant, inspiring and educating force in maintain- 
 ing and strengthening the lofty sentiment of 
 American patriotism."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "the battle hymn of the republic." 
 
 WHEN the civil war broke out there was no 
 great national hymn, generally accepted as 
 such. It is safe to say that not one in a 
 thousand could sing from memory either "The Star 
 Spangled Banner," or that ever beautiful and 
 always inspiring, patriotic hymn, "America." 
 For years the people had been discrediting our 
 patriotic songs by neglecting to study them; and 
 to-day newspapers and periodicals are disputing 
 over the question whether or no we really have an 
 appropriate national hymn ; and the effort to form 
 a common bond of sympathy or fellowship by the 
 union of heart and voice on memorized patriotic 
 songs is usually a dismal failure. 
 
 Some nine or ten years ago there was a reunion 
 of hundreds of students in Paris that included rep- 
 resentatives from manv countries. One excellent
 
 JULIA WARD HOWE.
 
 "the battle cry OF FREEDOM." 109 
 
 feature of the program was the singing of favorite 
 national songs by the respective nationalities. The 
 Russians, Swiss, Germans, English, Trench and 
 Italians sang their songs in splendid chorus, but 
 when the young Americans were called upon to 
 respond with one or two popular national songs, 
 they were at a loss what to do, for not one of them 
 could start a single American patriotic song. 
 Finally a happy thought struck the students from 
 the Southern states, and they sang, as best they 
 could, "We'll Hang John Brown," and the North- 
 ern boys, who were in the majority, followed with 
 the old army song, "We'll Hang Jeff Davis to a 
 Sour Apple Tree ;" and the first feeling of mortifi- 
 cation was dispelled by the uproarious merriment 
 that followed. 
 
 William E. Curtis, the Washington corre- 
 spondent of The Chicago Record, tells the story 
 that ex-Senator John Sherman pays so little atten- 
 tion to our national songs that lie hardly knows 
 one from another. During the presidential cam- 
 paign of 1896, while he was stumping in Ohio, the 
 band played "I'm Looking for the Bully of the 
 Town" to open his meeting. As soon as it finished 
 that spirited air Mr. Sherman arose and declared 
 that nothing so inspired a citizen with patriotism 
 for the performance of his duties to his country
 
 110 STOKIES OF GEEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 as the majestic strains of our grand old national 
 hymn, "The Star Spangled Banner/' and he 
 thanked the band for giving him the text for his 
 speech. Everybody laughed, of course, and Mr. 
 Sherman said afterwards that it was the most 
 irreverent audience he had ever addressed. 
 
 This need of a new national hymn to meet new 
 and exciting conditions, one that would be the 
 great peace song, yet the war song of the nation 
 the national heart-beat set to music was deeply 
 felt at the very beginning of the civil war. At the 
 request of many prominent Union men, a commit- 
 tee, composed of scholars and statesmen, among 
 whom were George William Curtis, Hamilton 
 Fish, and General John A. Dix, was appointed to 
 select such a hymn for the use of the homes in the 
 North and the army in the field. The committee 
 waited three months for such a song. Twelve hun- 
 dred competitors presented their compositions for 
 the prize of $250 for the words and $250 for the 
 music ; but not one of them was accepted. The 
 committee found that there was no soul-feeling, no 
 fire of patriotism, running through any of the 
 songs. It is just as possible to run a steam engine 
 with ice water as to produce a great song without 
 inspiration. Some one has said that money may 
 buy machinery sometimes in the form of men
 
 THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. HI 
 
 but inspiration, never. Once Robert Collyer 
 
 nestled up to the side of Samuel F. Smith and 
 
 quietly asked him how he wrote "My Country, 'tis 
 
 of Thee," and the venerable doctor answered, "It 
 
 was not written it just came." Great songs, 
 
 whether patriotic or religious, flow from hearts 
 
 beating with noble emotion ; and of all the twelve 
 
 hundred songs composed in 1861 in competition 
 
 for the prize of $500, not one is alive to-day. 
 
 But Julia Ward Howe, then not widely known 
 
 as a poet, had visited the army of the Potomac, 
 
 and there she saw the commotion of war, the bodies 
 
 shattered, the lives sacrificed, and the stress and 
 
 agony of the government in its mortal grapple with 
 
 rebellion. These things lay heavy upon her heart, 
 
 which throbbed in unison with the great heart of 
 
 the nation; and one night in December, in 1861, 
 
 she sprang from her bed and wrote the expression 
 
 of her soul in these words of living power : 
 
 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 fateful lightning of his terrible, swift 
 
 sword : 
 
 His truth is marching on. 
 I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling 
 
 camps ; 
 They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and 
 
 damps ;
 
 11 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 I can 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 be died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, 
 While God is marching on. 
 
 The hymn reads like an inspiration, and it is 
 no wonder that it is known wherever the English 
 language is spoken. The music made the words 
 of ''John Brown's Body" famous, but Mrs. Howe's 
 matchless battle song has made the melody 
 immortal. 
 
 The story of the writing of the song has been 
 told many times, but for the edification of the ris- 
 ing generation of Americans, and others who will 
 follow, it cannot be too often repeated. I can do 
 no better than to reproduce a portion of an article 
 written by Florence Howe Hall for the Xew York 
 Independent, September 22, 1S98. In telling of
 
 THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. 113 
 
 "The Building of a Nation's War Hymn/' she 
 says: 
 
 "It was in December, 1861, that Mrs. Howe, 
 in company with her husband, Governor and Mrs. 
 Andrew, and other friends, visited Washington,, 
 itself almost in the condition of an armed camp. 
 On their journey thither 'the watch-fires of a hun- 
 dred circling camps' gleamed in the darkness, the 
 railroad being paroled by pickets. Mrs. Howe has 
 told of the martial sights and sounds in the na- 
 tional capital, and of her drive to a distance of 
 several miles from the city to see a review of our 
 troops. An attack of the enemy interrupted the 
 program, and the return drive was made through 
 files of soldiers, who occupied almost the entire 
 road. To beguile the tedium of their slow progress, 
 Mrs. Howe and her friends sang army songs, 
 among others, 'John Brown's Body.' This seemed 
 to please the soldiers, who surrounded us like a 
 river, and who themselves took up the strain, in 
 the interval crying to us, "Good for you !' Our 
 poet had often wished to write words to be sung 
 to this tune, and now, indeed, had she 'read a fiery 
 gospel writ in burnished rows of steel.' 
 
 "She slept quietly that night; but waking be- 
 fore dawn, found herself weaving together the 
 lines of a poem, capable of being sung to the 'John
 
 114 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Brown' tune. Line after line, and verse after 
 verse fell into place, and Mrs. Howe, fearing that 
 they would fade from her mind, sprang out of bed, 
 and in the gray half-light hastily wrote down her 
 verses, went hack to bed and fell asleep again. 
 
 "When she returned to Boston she showed 
 them to James T. Fields, then editor of the Atlan- 
 tic Monthly. He suggested the title, 'Battle Hymn 
 of the Republic,' and published them promptly. 
 In the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1862, the 
 poem is printed on the first page, but the name of 
 the author is not mentioned ; indeed, no names are 
 appended to the table of contents. On the cover 
 of this number the American flag is substituted 
 for the usual design. It may interest practical 
 people to learn that Mrs. Howe received five dol- 
 lars for her poem." 
 
 The writer of the foregoing quotes Rudyard 
 Kipling, himself a man of genius, as describing- 
 Mrs. Howe's famous war lyric, as the "terrible 
 Battle Hymn of the Republic." "He saw that only 
 a Republic, a mighty nation of freemen, patient, 
 and slow to wrath, but terrible when once aroused, 
 could have inspired such a song. Yet when in 'The 
 Light That Failed' he makes a group of English- 
 men and men of other nationalities sing this hymn 
 as a fitting prelude to their departure for the scene
 
 THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. 115 
 
 of war, he recognizes also its universal quality 
 a hymn for men of every clime who love liberty 
 and are willing to lay down their lives for its 
 sake." 
 
 When James Russell Lowell was editor of the 
 Atlantic Monthly, he declined to publish a poem 
 written by Mrs. Howe, giving as his reason there- 
 for that no woman could write a poem, and he said 
 that "Mrs. Browning's efforts were a conspicuous 
 illustration of this fact." But after Mr. Lowell 
 vacated the editor's chair, Mrs. Howe did write 
 a poem, and although he wrote many verses which 
 will live long in our literature, he produced noth- 
 ing that will last as long, or touch the popular 
 heart as deeply, as the glorious anthem 
 
 "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." 
 
 Mrs. Howe says that a printed copy of the 
 words and music of the song was once sent her 
 from Constantinople by some person unknown to 
 her; but afterwards, when she visited Roberts 
 College, near the Turkish capital, the professors 
 and their ladies, at parting, asked her to listen 
 well to what she might hear on her way down the 
 steep declivity, and to her wonderment she heard, 
 '"in sweet, full cadence, the lines which scarcely 
 seem mine, so much are thev the breath of that
 
 116 STORIES OF GREAT XATIOXAE SOXGS. 
 
 heroic time and of the feeling with which it was 
 filled." 
 
 There is a wonderful touch of pathos, as well 
 as patriotism, in this unique battle hymn. Its 
 power over the emotions of men is forcibly ex- 
 emplified in an incident that took place during the 
 presidential campaign of 1896. United States 
 Senator Thomas C. Piatt is known as an intense 
 partisan, and it is not unkind to say of him that he 
 is a master in managing the so-called machine in 
 the Republican politics of Xew York. At a politi- 
 cal gathering, at which the senator was the central 
 figure, if not the controlling spirit, there came a 
 lull in the disputation of the evening, when, in a 
 voice uncultured, of course, but full of feeling 
 that was strangely pathetic, he began the beautiful 
 stanza 
 
 "In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea." 
 The other politicians took up the refrain - 
 "Glory, glory, hallelujah." 
 
 The effect was unusually impressive. The asperi- 
 ties of the old political warriors were softened by 
 the hallowed sentiment of the song ; and it was said 
 that the result was altogether beyond the power of 
 the charming oratory of Chauncey M. Depew to 
 produce.
 
 "THE BATTLE HYMX OF THE REPUBLIC. 117 
 
 I want to quote a few more lines from Florence 
 Howe Hall's excellent paper on the story of the 
 "Battle Hymn of the Kepublic:" "Unlike many 
 of the songs of the civil war, it contains nothing 
 sectional, nothing personal, nothing of a temporary 
 character. Its author has repeated it to audiences 
 without number, East, West, Xorth and South. 
 While we feel the beauty of the lines and their 
 aspiration after freedom, even in the piping times 
 of peace, it is only in time of storm and stress that 
 their full meaning shines out. Written with in- 
 tense feeling, they seem to burn and glow when 
 our own emotions are aroused, as they have been 
 of late." 
 
 The reader will remember the sudden and 
 extremely sad death of the wife of United States 
 Senator John M. Thurston, of Xebraska, which 
 took place on board the steam yacht Anita, off 
 Sagua la Grande, Cuba, on the 14th of March, 
 1898. She had gone to Cuba with her husband 
 and a congressional delegation to personally inves- 
 tigate and report upon the situation there. It was 
 a mission of mercy in which Mrs. Thurston took 
 an uncommon interest. Shi' was taken suddenly 
 ill on a stormy sea, and died in a tew hours. In 
 her dying moments this broad, noble-hearted 
 woman, made a pathetic appeal for the deliverance
 
 118 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 of Cuba from, the ruthless hand of Spain. Ten 
 days later, Mr. Thurston, standing in the Senate 
 of the United States, said he was there by com- 
 mand of silent lips, to speak once and for all, upon 
 the Cuban situation; and his masterly plea, for 
 the freedom of the people that had been beaten 
 with many stripes, was concluded Avith the sublime 
 stanzas so precious to Mrs. Thurston : 
 
 "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." 
 
 Mr. Murat Halstead, the widely known journal- 
 ist, witnessed the execution of John Brown on the 
 2d of December, 1859, and in an article on "The 
 Tragedy of John Brown," printed in the Xew 
 York Independent, December 1, 1898, he relates 
 the following interesting incident : 
 
 "Something more than ten years later, August, 
 1870, in Eastern France, I was with the German 
 invaders of the fair land of Lorraine, and one day 
 as I looked upon a division of the Grand Army of 
 the Red Prince, a monstrous mass of men with the 
 spikes of their helmets and their bayonets glitter- 
 ing over them under a vast tawny cloud of dust, I 
 heard with amazement a deep throated burst of 
 song in English, and it was :
 
 "the battle hymn of the republic." H 9 
 
 'John Brown's body is mouldering in the ground, 
 But his soul is marching on, 
 
 Glory, hallelujah!' 
 
 The German invaders often sang magnificently 
 while marching. German soldiers in our army, 
 in the war of the States, returning to the Father- 
 land to fight the French, taught their comrades the 
 splendid marching song with which the legions of 
 the ]S r orth sang along the historic highways of 
 Virginia, that Father Abraham's boys were 
 coming and the soul of John Brown was marching 
 on." 
 
 This soul-inspiring "Battle Hymn of the 
 Republic" was the incarnation of patriotism and 
 martial feeling pent np in the tune of "John 
 Brown's Body." It was struck out of the white 
 heat of unconscious inspiration the soul's product 
 of a mighty moment. "All through the wild 
 echoes of the fearful struggle" of the civil war, 
 this song was a messenger of faith, hope, and 
 promise. It is indeed the most resonant and 
 elevating of all American battle hymns. It is 
 simple, but dignified, full of vigor, and is worthy 
 of being the imperishable war song of a Christian 
 Nation. 
 
 Florence Howe Hall, says : "The soul of the 
 vast army of the American people, struggling for
 
 120 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 utterance in the greatest crisis of its existence, at 
 last found a voice to express its meaning, and its 
 aspiration the voice of a woman" a voice that 
 will ever make the music of patriots 
 
 "While God is marching on."
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 "\VE ARE COMING, FATHER ABRAHAM." 
 
 MEASURED by the service it performed at 
 a most critical period during the war 
 between the States, the song entitled, "We 
 are Coming, Father Abraham," deserves a 
 permanent place in the story of the songs of the 
 Union. It was indeed famous in its day and 
 generation, and because it has now largely fallen 
 into disuse, is no reason why its story should not 
 be perpetuated. Any important facts bearing on 
 the life and character of the man who wrote the 
 song, or any stirring event that inspired it, cannot 
 fail to be of special interest. 
 
 This country saw sonic dark days in 1862; 
 and although under previous calls there were 
 fully 500,000 volunteers in the field, a demand 
 for more troops was made by the generals, and on 
 the second of Julv of that vear. President Lincoln
 
 122 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 issued a proclamation for 300,000 more. It was 
 to aid in the filling of the stricken ranks of the 
 Grand Army of the Republic under that call, that 
 Mr. John S. Gibbons wrote the rallying song, 
 which is as follows : 
 
 We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 
 Three hundred thousand more, 
 From Mississippi's winding stream 
 
 And from New England's shore. 
 We leave our plows and workshops, 
 
 Our wives and children dear, 
 With hearts too full for utterance, 
 
 With but a silent tear. 
 We dare not look behind us, 
 
 But steadfastly before 
 We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 
 Three hundred thousand more ! 
 
 We are coming, we are coming, 
 
 Our Union to restore; 
 We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 
 Three hundred thousand more; 
 We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 
 Three hundred thousand more. 
 
 If you look across the hilltops 
 
 That meet the northern sky, 
 Long, moving lines of rising dust 
 
 Your vision may descry. 
 And now the wind an instant 
 
 Tears the cloudy veil aside 
 And floats our spangled flag 
 
 In glory and in pride,
 
 WE ARE COMING, FATHER ABRAHAM. 123 
 
 And bayonets in the sunlight gleam 
 
 And bands brave music pour 
 We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 
 Three hundred thousand more ! 
 
 If you look all up our valleys 
 
 Where the growing harvests shine, 
 You may see our sturdy farmer boys 
 
 Fast forming into line; 
 And children from their mothers' knees 
 
 Are pulling at the weeds, 
 And learning how to reap and sow, 
 
 Against their country's needs ; 
 And a farewell group stands weeping 
 
 At every cottage door 
 We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 
 Three hundred thousand more! 
 
 You have called us and we're coming, 
 
 By Richmond's bloody tide, 
 To lay us down for freedom's sake, 
 
 Our brothers' bones beside; 
 Or from foul treason's savage grasp 
 
 To wrench the murderous blade. 
 And in the face of foreign foes, 
 
 Its fragments to parade. 
 Six hundred thousand loyal men 
 
 And true have gone before 
 We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 
 Three hundred thousand more! 
 
 Mr. Gibbons was a member of the liberal wing 
 of the Quaker family called the Ilicksites, founded 
 in the United States by Elias Hicks, about 1827. 
 He believed in the kind of war the government 
 was carrying on; and his son-in-law, Mr. James
 
 124 STOEIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 H. Morse, speaking of Mr. Gibbons' Quakerism 
 in a letter to Mr. Brander Matthews, says he had 
 "a reasonable leaning, however, toward wrath in 
 cases of emergency." 
 
 I take the liberty to reproduce from Mr. 
 Matthews' excellent article, in the Century 
 Magazine, on "The Songs of the War," some inter- 
 esting facts regarding Mr. Gibbons and his ringing 
 call to arms. He lived in New York City, and 
 became an abolitionist, and was one of the editors 
 of the "Anti-Slavery Standard." When the war 
 broke out Mrs. Gibbons and her eldest daughter 
 went to the front and served in the hospitals until 
 the close of the conflict. In the great draft riots 
 in New York City, in 1863, Mr. Gibbons' house 
 was sacked, and to escape the fury of the mob, he 
 and his two youngest daughters made their way 
 over the roofs of houses to Eighth Avenue, where 
 Mr. Joseph II. Choate, now ambassador to Great 
 Britain, had a carriage in waiting for them. 
 It seems that the class of people composing the mob 
 had become exasperated by the great influence of 
 Mr. Gibbons' song in swelling the ranks of the 
 army. 
 
 When the call came for 300,000 more volun- 
 teers, Mr. Gibbons would take long walks and 
 ponder the matter of writing a song which would
 
 WE ARE COMING, FATHER ABRAHAM.' 125 
 
 meet the extraordinary emergency. He had 
 previously written verse, but was best known as a 
 writer on financial topics, having published two 
 books on banks and banking, and for a while was 
 financial editor of The Xew York Evening Post. 
 The song did not come by inspiration. It was the 
 product of much thought, and one incident after 
 another was required to give him aid in putting 
 together the lines which were to contribute 
 so much to the uprising of the people in 
 response to the President's call. When the 
 song was finished it was printed in The 
 Evening Post, on the 16th of July, 1862, 
 just two weeks after the proclamation was 
 issued. Mr. Gibbons appears to have had the idea 
 that he would save his reputation by publishing 
 the song anonymously, but it read so well and was 
 in all respects so suited to the times, that at a great 
 mass meeting held in Boston, on the evening after 
 it appeared in Xew York, the distinguished Josiah 
 Quincy read it as "the latest, poem written by 
 William Cullen Bryant." The song was copied 
 far and wide and credited to Mr. Bryant, who was 
 editor of The Post; and it became necessary, in 
 justice to Mr. Gibbons, for Mr. Bryant to publish 
 
 "aiVp SL'AV .IOUOI] UIOIfAY 0} .TOUOTj O.UJIJ UOItfAV 910U V 
 
 The words of the song have been adapted to
 
 126 STOEIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 music by several composers, but the original 
 setting by one of the members of the Hutchinson 
 family, by whom the song was first sung, was the 
 most stirring of them all. There were some gloomy 
 days for the government in 1864, when orders for 
 drafting 700,000 men were issued, and Mr. 
 Matthews relates an incident that occurred during 
 the summer of that year which is very pathetic. 
 One day Lincoln was called down to the Red Room 
 of the White House to meet some visitors, and 
 stood with "bowed head, and patient, pensive 
 eyes," so peculiar to that sad man, while one of 
 the visitors sang : 
 
 "We are coming, Father Abraham, 
 Three hundred thousand more." 
 
 Mr. Gibbons died in New York, October 17, 
 1892.
 
 CIIAPTEE XII. 
 
 A TKIO OF GOOD WAR SONGS. 
 
 AS the soldier was nerved for the shock of battle 
 by the inspiration in the "Battle Cry of 
 Freedom," so in his prison cell his heart 
 was fired with hope by the cheering strains of 
 
 "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching." 
 And how to the sound of that music the blood 
 still thrills with the enthusiasm of '65. There is 
 forcible suggestion of the solid march of Union 
 armies in the words and music of that familiar 
 song. It was composed by Dr. Root both words 
 and music quite early in the war. Its purpose 
 was to give a more hopeful view of the conditions 
 of the country, and more particularly to cheer the 
 boys who had been captured by the enemy and 
 placed in prison pens. 
 
 In that remarkable scene at Charleston in the
 
 128 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 fall of 1864, we have a striking example of the 
 inspiring power in a song of patriotism. Several 
 hundred of our soldiers were herded in a prison 
 pen. They were half starved, ill-clad, and 
 staggered in their weakness. One afternoon when 
 they were marched out of the pen, but only to 
 exchange one prison for another, there came from 
 these veterans of war, an outburst in the prisoner's 
 song of hope : 
 
 "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching, 
 Cheer up, comrades, they will come, 
 And beneath the starry flag we shall breathe the air again, 
 Of the freeland in our own beloved home." 
 
 These suffering defenders of the Union sang 
 the song not only with patriotic unction, but in 
 splendid triumph, for in a few months after the 
 affecting scenes of that day, they did hear tramp, 
 tramp, tramp, and the boys came marching like 
 conquering heroes, prison doors were unloosed, 
 prison pen walls were broken down, and the boys 
 breathed the air of freedom again. 
 
 The Charleston scene teaches us that we can 
 sing away our cares better than we can reason them 
 away; and there are thousands of times in our 
 lives when we put a song under our burdens and 
 they disappear, and we learn to love music for 
 what it makes us forget and for what it makes us
 
 A TEIO OF GOOD WAR SOXGS. 1 29 
 
 remember. It has been said that one song in time 
 of trouble and storm is worth a whole band in ease 
 and sunshine. The ministry of song is one of 
 these beautiful and mighty influences which are 
 ever illustrated in the highest and divinest life of 
 man and in the supremest crisis of every nation. 
 
 There is more mournful pathos in Dr. Root's 
 ''Just Before the Battle, Mother," than any other 
 of the thirty or more army songs he composed. 
 The song whose sentiment was truly pathetic had 
 a mission in the army as well as the song of humor 
 ''Wake, Nicodemus" or the song of cheer 
 "Rally Round the Flag." Dr. Root wrote for 
 almost all the varied circumstances caused 
 by the war, and has written for all time as well. 
 Some one has said, speaking of '"Just Before the 
 Battle, Mother," that ''mother and sons are ever 
 thinking of each other ; there is always a war, a 
 conflict, a battle, a triumph, a blessing somewhere, 
 and Dr. Root caught its melody and gave it life :" 
 
 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 around me lying. 
 
 Filled with thoughts of home and God, 
 For well they know that on the morrow, 
 
 Some will sleep beneath the sod.
 
 130 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Farewell, mother, you may never 
 
 Press me to your heart again. 
 Oh, you'll not forget me, mother, 
 
 If I'm numbered with the slain. 
 
 Oh, I long to see you, mother, 
 
 And the loving ones at home, 
 But I'll never leave our banner 
 
 Till in honor I can come. 
 
 Tell the traitors all around you 
 
 That their cruel words we know, 
 In every battle kill our soldiers 
 
 By the help they give the foe. 
 
 Hark! I hear the bugle 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. 
 
 I clearly remember how the boys in the 
 Thirty-third Wisconsin Infantry used to sing this 
 song with almost ineffable emotion. In the dull- 
 ness of camp life and on long and weary marches 
 it appeared to exert a helpful influence that no 
 other song could. The words and music blended 
 so well, and so well interpreted each other in days 
 when many a boy in peril felt all the sentiments 
 the song expressed, that it became one of the great 
 sonsrs of the arm v.
 
 A TRIO OF GOOD WAR SOXGS. 13l 
 
 In "Bright Skies and Dark Shadows," by the 
 Rev. Dr. Henry M. Field, a curious incident is 
 given which took place on the day of the great 
 battle of Franklin, Tenn., November 30, 1864, 
 and was told to Dr. Field on the battle field, by 
 a Mr. McEwen, an old resident at Nashville, at 
 whose house General Kimball made his head- 
 quarters, and from the front door of which Mr. 
 McEwen witnessed the whole battle : 
 
 "About four o'clock, after the General had left 
 for the field, there lingered a Colonel from 
 Indianapolis in my parlor, who asked my 
 daughters to sing and play a piece of music. I 
 requested the young ladies to sing 'Just Before the 
 Battle, Mother.' As I stepped to the door, a shell 
 exploded within fifty yards. The Colonel imme- 
 diately sprang to his feet and ran in the direction 
 of his regiment, but before he reached it, or about 
 that time, he was shot, the bullet passing quite 
 through him. He was taken to Xashville, and 
 eighteen days after I received a message from him 
 through an officer, stating the fact of his being 
 shot, and that the piece of music the young women 
 were executing was still ringing in his ears, and 
 had been ever since he left my parlor on the after- 
 noon of the battle. In April, four months later, 
 after the war was over, ho had >ufncientlv
 
 132 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 recovered to travel, when he came to Franklin, 
 expressly to get the young ladies to finish the song, 
 and relieve his ears. His wife and more than a 
 dozen officers accompanied him. He found the 
 young women and they sang and played the piece 
 through for him in the presence of all the officers, 
 and they wept like children." 
 
 Tens of thousands of people in this country 
 and in foreign lands have sung "The Vacant 
 Chair." It is a song of the war that will never 
 grow old. It has carried comfort to many 
 thousands of sorrowing hearts, and its mission 
 will never end. As long as Memorial Day is 
 observed by the American people, and flowers are 
 tenderly laid upon the graves of our fallen heroes, 
 "The Vacant Chair" will be sung. A song we love 
 becomes all the dearer when we know something 
 of the circumstances that gave it birth. Its 
 touching story is well worth repeating and 
 remembering. 
 
 The battle of Balls Bluff, Va., in which 
 General McClellan was defeated, v*as fought on 
 the 21st of October, 1861. In the engagement 
 was the Fifteenth Massachusetts Infantry, 
 commanded by Colonel Charles Devens, who 
 afterwards was Attorney General in President 
 Have.-' Cabinet. The Federal army became
 
 A TEIO OF GOOD WAR SONGS. 133 
 
 demoralized, and a stampede followed. In the 
 Fifteenth Regiment was Lieutenant William F. 
 Grout, only eighteen years old, but brave and 
 manly. There is an account which says that 
 during the battle, while men fell on every side, he 
 escaped unharmed, and that his courage and self- 
 possession urged his men to renewed efforts. 
 When the day was lost and the men were forced 
 to retreat to the river he seemed to be utterly 
 regardless of himself in his desire to have the 
 wounded conveyed to the opposite shore. He 
 crossed the stream with a boat load of sufferers, 
 and, seeing them safely landed, returned to render 
 like assistance to others ; but the deadly fire made 
 it necessary to abandon the boats, and he was soon 
 obliged to plunge into the stream to save himself 
 from captivity or death. He had reached the 
 middle of the river when he exclaimed to a 
 comrade near at hand : "Tell Company D I could 
 have reached the shore but I'm shot," and the 
 waters immediately closed over him. 
 
 Four weeks later Henry S. Washburn, of 
 Worcester, Mass., (now living in Boston at the age 
 of eighty-five) being well acquainted with young 
 Grout, and thinking with deep emotion of the chair 
 that would be vacant at the thanksgiving board in 
 the home of sorrow, wrote the words of the sons
 
 34 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL, SONGS. 
 
 in one of these inspired moments, so strange in 
 their influence moments in which all the great 
 songs of the world have been sung, and all the 
 master discourses pronounced: 
 
 We shall meet, but we shall miss him; 
 
 There will be one vacant chair ; 
 We shall linger to caress him 
 
 When we breathe our evening prayer. 
 When a year ago we gathered 
 
 Joy was in his mild blue eye; 
 But a golden cord is severed 
 And our hopes in ruin lie. 
 
 At our fireside, sad and lonely, 
 
 Often will the bosom swell 
 At remembrance of the story 
 
 How our noble Willie fell ; 
 How he strove to bear our banner 
 
 Through the thickest of the fight, 
 
 And uphold our country's honor 
 
 With the strength of manhood's might. 
 
 True, they tell us, wreaths of glory 
 
 Evermore will deck his brow; 
 But this soothes the anguish only 
 
 Sweeping o'er our heartstrings now. 
 Sleep to-day, early fallen ! 
 
 In thy green and narrow bed; 
 Dirges from the pine and cypress 
 
 Mingle with the tears we shed. 
 
 We shall meet, but we shall miss him ; 
 
 There will be one vacant chair ; 
 We shall linger to caress him 
 
 When we breathe our evening prayer.
 
 A TEIO OF GOOD WAR SONGS. 135 
 
 In a few weeks after the lines were written Dr. 
 Root set them to music, and the song soon gained 
 international fame. The sad fate of Willie of the 
 song, who fought so well and died so tragically in 
 his youth, is sung in hundreds of thousands of 
 homes here and in foreign lands.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 "MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA." 
 
 AMONG the songs of the Union which have a 
 living popularity there is none more deeply 
 cherished than Work's remarkable song, 
 "Marching Through Georgia." It came into 
 being to commemorate one of the most striking 
 episodes of the war, the famous march of Sherman 
 from Atlanta to the sea. It was a song of the 
 last grand effort of the war of the Rebellion, and 
 from the first it had a powerful influence in 
 reviving hope and courage during the closing days 
 of 1864. 
 
 In 1841 a man named Alanson Work was 
 walking along a road in Missouri, when he was 
 overtaken by some fugitive slaves who asked him 
 the way to a free state. He directed them, and 
 responding to their pitiable beseechings, gave them 
 a little money to aid them in their escape from
 
 ii i:\uy c. nyoiik.
 
 MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA. 137 
 
 bondage. For this he was arrested tried and 
 convicted, and sentenced to twelve years at hard 
 labor in the state prison at Jefferson City. After 
 serving a term of three or four years he was 
 pardoned on condition that he should return to 
 Connecticut, his native state. But how true are 
 the words of Shakespeare : "Thus the whirligig 
 of time brings his revenges." 
 
 One morning in the early months of the war, 
 a young man climbed up to the private room of 
 Dr. George F. Root, in Chicago, with the 
 manuscript of a song for the doctor to examine. 
 He was a tall, care-worn, invalid-like fellow, with 
 sadness in his voice and bearing, and poverty in 
 his dress. The composer looked at the finely 
 written music, and then with astonishment and in 
 pity, he gazed at the forlorn apparition before him, 
 wondering how such a soul as that could produce 
 music. The doctor asked him if he wrote the 
 words and tune, and in a diffident tone, burdened 
 with pathos, he said "yes." He was a printer by 
 trade, but was sickly, and could do but little work. 
 The song was the popular "Kingdom Coming," the 
 first great humorous song of the war. The young 
 man was Henry C. Work, who was nine years old 
 when his father was sentenced to twelve years 
 imprisonment for bestowing charity upon the
 
 138 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 fugitives. Henry had vivid remembrances of his 
 father's persecution, and had an ardent desire to 
 render some service in the cause of the Union, and 
 Dr. Root encouraged him to write songs for the 
 boys who were strong enough to fight, and his war- 
 pieces became a marvelous power in the army. 
 
 The song by Mr. Work, which supersedes all 
 others of his making, was written shortly after 
 General Sherman began his great march from 
 Atlanta to the sea, the movement of the army 
 beginning about the 16th of Xovember, 1864. 
 
 Bring the good old bugle, boys, 
 
 We'll sing another song; 
 Sing it with the 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.
 
 MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA. 139 
 
 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. 
 
 It was a handsome boast, 
 Had they not forgot, alas ! 
 
 To reckon with their 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. 
 
 Mr. Work wrote some splendid army songs, 
 but his reputation will rest on "Marching 
 Through Georgia." There are cheering strains 
 in the music which did much to enliven the camps ; 
 and there is a swinging rhythm about it that kept 
 in step the marching of the masses. Dr. Root 
 thought that "Marching Through Georgia" was 
 more frequently used than any other song of the 
 war; not so much on account of the intrinsic merit 
 of its words or music, but because it is retrospec-
 
 140 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 tive. "Other war songs, like the 'Battle Cry of 
 Freedom/ were for exciting a patriotic feeling on 
 going in the war or in battle, while 'Marching 
 Through Georgia' is a glorious remembrance on 
 coming triumphantly out." 
 
 In a certain sense, it is the song of all army 
 songs. It has been said that "age cannot wither 
 nor custom stale the infinite variety of ways the 
 tune is served up, from the newsboys on the streets 
 to the Salvation Army and the tenore-robusto who 
 sings campaign songs, and from Gilmore's band 
 to the Dago organ, the gamut of human and arti- 
 ficial instrumentalities is run with varying 
 success." 
 
 So universal in its use was "Marching Through 
 Georgia" that General Sherman heard it with 
 supreme disgust. It pursued him from city to 
 city, and from state to state ; and in all the great 
 cities of Europe in which he was received with dis- 
 tinguished honors, the burden of the music was 
 "Marching Through Georgia." When the general 
 attended the national encampment of the Grand 
 Army of the Republic in Boston in 1890, he saw 
 from the reviewing stand two hundred and fifty 
 bands, and a hundred drum and fife corps pass in 
 review ; and the old warrior stood for seven mortal 
 hours listening to the never-ending strains of the
 
 "MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA. 141 
 
 music which commemorates the most triumphant 
 march of modern times. His patience collapsed, 
 and with a grim gravity, peculiar to him, and in 
 language too emphatic for repetition here, he de- 
 clared that he would never attend another national 
 encampment until every band in the United States 
 has signed an agreement not to play "Marching 
 Through Georgia" in his presence. This was 
 Sherman's last encampment, and when the tune 
 was next played in his presence, six months after, 
 "there came no response from the echoless shore 
 to which his soul had wafted." 
 
 The melody of "Marching Through Georgia" 
 has found its way into nearly every country of the 
 globe. At a monthly dinner of the Commandery 
 of the Loyal Legion of the United States, given 
 in Xew York City two or three years before Gen- 
 eral Sherman's death, he related this amusing inci- 
 dent : "Wherever I go, not only in my own coun- 
 try, but in Europe, 'Marching Through Georgia' 
 pursues me. On one occasion, arriving at a Dublin 
 hotel in a driving rain, [ was congratulating my- 
 self that the weather was such as to preclude the 
 possibility of the usual serenade, and drawing 
 forth my writing materials, I addressed myself to 
 my long-neglected correspondence. Scarcely had 
 I gotten under way, however, when the strains of
 
 142 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 that infernal tune smote upon my ear. I sprang 
 up, and, hustling into my uniform, stepped out 
 upon the veranda. In the distance a band was 
 approaching, followed by a number of men with 
 guns on their shoulders. I advanced to the rail- 
 ing, and prepared for the pending ovation, but 
 without a pause, or even a glance toward the spot 
 where I stood, they went on 'Marching Through 
 Georgia.' It was a gunning club, so some one told 
 me afterwards, going to a certain place to shoot at 
 a target." 
 
 There is an expression of enthusiasm in this 
 war tune which is as fresh now as it was thirty-four 
 years ago. A story is told that a veteran living in 
 the backwoods of Ohio was called out to march 
 with other members of the Grand Army of the 
 Republic. He had borne the burden and heat of 
 many days in the civil war, and the hard service 
 and the weight of years were telling upon him. 
 After marching a mile or two, the strain became 
 too severe for the old soldier. His step was uncer- 
 tain, and he could hardly keep up with the others. 
 Finally the commander said to him : 
 
 "Say, Tom, keep step ; you are throwing out 
 the whole line." "Cap, how kin a feller keep step 
 to that music ?" lie replied, pointing to the band 
 leading the line with one of the popular airs of
 
 MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA. 143 
 
 the day. "Why don't they play something like 
 this?" and he hummed, in a voice husky and 
 scratchy and out of tune, a strain from "March- 
 ing Through Georgia." The captain laughed and 
 turned away, and the introductory notes of the next 
 piece caused the old fellow to straighten up. His 
 cudgel waved about like the baton of a drum-major, 
 and a little later a thousand feet were coming down 
 as one ; the fatigue of the march was forgotten, and 
 a thousand voices were joined in the rousing 
 chorus. 
 
 Henry Clay Work was born at Middletown, 
 Conn., in 1832. He had received a common school 
 education, and in 1855 settled in Chicago, where 
 he continued his trade as a printer. He began to 
 write songs quite early in his young manhood, and 
 one of his first compositions was "Lily Dale," 
 which, it is said, brought him $2,500. During his 
 life he wrote seventy-five songs, but not being at 
 his best at all times, many of them have passed 
 away with the impulse or the occasion that pro- 
 duced them, and are now forgotten. 
 
 Mr. Work's fame as a writer of songs began 
 with the breaking out of the civil war. As already 
 stated, his first humorous song of the war was 
 "Kingdom Coming," then followed "Wake Xico- 
 demus," "Babvlon is Fallen," "Grafted Into the
 
 144 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Army," "Brave Boys Are They/' "Song of a Thou- 
 sand Years," and the last, but greatest of all, 
 "Marching Through Georgia." As there was a 
 tender ministry in such a song as "Just Before the 
 Battle, Mother," so there was a special ministry 
 of good cheer in the humorous pieces composed by 
 Mr. Work which saved thousands of soldiers from 
 despair. Apropos of our jocular war songs, the 
 Russian battle hymn is usually a mournful thing, 
 and an American traveler says that when a man 
 has been compelled to hear a Russian war melody, 
 it will make him mad enough to fight somebody if 
 he had to walk a thousand miles to find his man. 
 
 The popularity and frequent use of "Marching 
 Through Georgia" have overshadowed all other 
 songs of the war written or composed by Mr. Work. 
 Among his best compositions was "Song of a Thou- 
 sand Years," written when the war-cloud was low- 
 est and darkest and when the cause of the Union 
 did not have the friendly sympathy of England. 
 Of course, the words are now obsolete. There are 
 no "desponding freemen ;" no "needless fears to 
 fling to the winds ;" no "envious foes beyond the 
 ocean ;" no "rebels to hide their faces ;" and no 
 "secret traitors to creep back to their dens." 
 
 The visit of President McKinley to the South 
 in the autumn of 1898, "meant full reconciliation
 
 MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA. 145 
 
 of the surviving veterans of the Blue and the Gray, 
 their sons and grandsons, over the shriven ashes 
 of their dead comrades on both sides. His kindly 
 words broke the seal of the sepulchre in which 
 Southern loyalty had been buried with the ashes 
 of its dead heroes, and gave a new resurrection to 
 its ancient love for the flag of their fathers. They 
 smote the rock of Southern prejudice and from it 
 gushed forth the living waters of patriotic senti- 
 ment so long locked up." Therefore the words of 
 ''Song of a Thousand Years" are out of harmony 
 with our new relations. But the music is stately 
 and vigorous, and should be set to nobler words. 
 If some poet of the soul could be inspired to pro- 
 duce lines which would give expression to the high- 
 est patriotism, or to praise that is the symbol of 
 perpetual gladness, and wed them to the melody 
 of ''Song of a Thousand Years," it would give 
 meritorious honor to one of our best tunes of the 
 civil war. 
 
 The last years of Henry C. Work were full of 
 sadness. Accumulating a handsome competence 
 from the sale of his war songs, ho went to Europe 
 in IS 65, and spent two years in travel. It was 
 during his stay abroad that he was married, 
 although There is a conflict of opinion as to the 
 time, there being no written account of the event.
 
 146 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 In 1867 he settled in Vineland, N. J., and in con- 
 nection with an elder brother, invested a large part 
 of his fortune in a fruit farm. While living in 
 Vineland his first child died, and a second was 
 born to him. Work was never a hopeful man, and 
 when his little boy was taken away the melancholy 
 which had been too often his companion, came 
 upon him in a worse form than ever before. It 
 was about this time that his wife's mind became 
 seriously affected, which made it necessary to take 
 her to an asylum for the insane. Work was over- 
 whelmed by this calamity, and when his little prop- 
 erty in Chicago was swept away by the fire of 
 1871, and his investment in Vineland went down 
 in the vortex that had sunk many other fortunes, 
 the sad man became a wanderer upon the 
 earth. When he saw that all was gone, the only 
 comment he made on his adversities was : "It is 
 well ; had I become rich I might have become 
 hard." But in his sorrow and despondency Mr. 
 Work judged himself too harshly. lie was a sym- 
 pathetic man by nature, was always kind and 
 gentle, and was generous to a fault in his giving. 
 
 Mr. Cady, formerly of Root k Cady, music 
 publishers of Chicago, relates the story that he 
 went to Xew York shortly after the Chicago fire 
 to sr> into business for himself, and concluded that
 
 MARCHIXG THROUGH GEORGIA. 147 
 
 if he could get a new song from Work it would be 
 helpful to both. He began a search for the com- 
 poser, and at last found him reading proof in a 
 printing house. When Mr. Cady said to him, 
 "Henry, I want you to write me a song," the latter, 
 hardly able to control his emotions, answered, "I 
 have no heart to write songs again." But Mr. 
 Cady encouraged him to consent, and in a few 
 days Mr. Work handed him "My Grandfather's 
 Clock," "Sweet Echo Dell," and one of a spiritual 
 nature, "Life Beyond the Veil." In handing them 
 to Mr. Cady he remarked that he considered them 
 of little merit, holding the latter piece, however, 
 as the best. The last two did not reach a heavy 
 sale, and Mr. Work was deeply disappointed be- 
 cause "Life Beyond the Veil" was not appreciated. 
 "My Grandfather's Clock" was a success from the 
 start, and nearly a quarter of a million copies were 
 sold. 
 
 After the appearance of "My Grandfather's 
 Clock" in the latter part of 1875, Mr. Work 
 seemed to lead an aimless life. This was his last 
 song worthy of mention. He lived in self-imposed 
 retirement in Xew York City, and at times went 
 to Hartford, Conn., to visit his aged mother, and 
 it was on one of these occasions that he was taken 
 unexpectedly ill. and passed away on the 8th of 
 June, 1884.
 
 148 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 It has been written that there is a way to make 
 life so true that when "the sunset is nearing, with 
 its murky vapor and lowering skies, the very clouds 
 of sorrow may be fringed with golden light." But 
 Mr. Work could not find that way, neither could 
 he understand the philosophy which teaches that 
 adversity is sent for our instruction. The rarest 
 birds are those that sing sweetest in time of storm ; 
 and the songs which have the most powerful hold 
 on human affection and will longest endure, have 
 come from the hearts of men and women when 
 their sorrows were keenest and life's way darkest. 
 But, unfortunately, Work could not command 
 himself in the storm of disappointment, and was 
 beaten back; and the voice that once sang for 
 the inspiration of the Union in the winter of war, 
 was silent in the winter of his own life.
 
 OLD SHADY.
 
 CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 OLD SHADY THE FAMOUS SINGING COOK. 
 
 PERHAPS the most fun-provoking song of the 
 civil war is "Old Shady." With a fine bass 
 or baritone voice behind it, it is over-run- 
 ning with laughter. To announce the piece at a 
 war song concert, or at a public entertainment of 
 any kind, is to create a flutter of pleasant anticipa- 
 tion and to signify to the auditors that merriment 
 may have full swing. 
 
 During the siege of Vicksburg, in May and 
 June of 18G3, a great many slaves had escaped 
 within the Union lines. Some of them were hired 
 by the officers in various departments of the army, 
 and many others were given free transportation 
 North. Among those serving as cooks was a slave, 
 almost white, who was known by the name of "Old 
 Shady." He was employed at the headquarters 
 of General McPherson during the siege, and was
 
 150 STORIES OF GEEAT XATIOXAL SONGS. 
 
 a fine specimen of simple, honest manhood. Gen- 
 eral Sherman, in an article in The Xorth Ameri- 
 can Review, says "Old Shady''" was a poet in the 
 rough. After supper, the officers at headquarters, 
 including several generals, and Mrs. Grant and 
 Mrs. Sherman, would assemble to hear him and 
 his chorus of darkies sing. One of the songs be- 
 came very popular, and was personal to the negro 
 cook, entitled, "Day of Jubilee," but now better 
 known as "Old Shady/' which ran thus : 
 
 Oh. yah. yah. darkies, laugh wid me. 
 Fur de white folks say Ole Shady's free. 
 So don't you see dat de jubilee 
 Is a-eoming. coming Hail mightv dav! 
 
 Den away, den away. I can't stay here no longer. 
 Den away, den away, for I am going home. 
 
 Oh. mass' got scared and so did his lady. 
 Dis chile breaks fur Ole Uncle Aby: 
 ''Open de gates, out here's Ole Shady 
 A-coming, coming'' Hail mighty day! 
 
 Goodby. Mass' Jeff, goodby Mis'r Stephens, 
 'Scuse dis niggah fur takin" his leavins, 
 'Spect purty soon you'll hear Uncle Abram's 
 Coming,, coming Hail mighty day! 
 
 Goodby. hard work, wid never any pay. 
 I'ze a-gwine up north where de good folks say 
 Dat white wheat bread and a dollar a day 
 Are coming, coming Hail mightv dav!
 
 OLD SHADY THE FAMOUS SINGING COOK. 151 
 
 Oh, I've got a wife and I've got a baby, 
 Livin' up yonder in Lower Canady, 
 Won't dey laugh when dey see Ole Shady 
 A-coming, coming Hail mighty day! 
 
 General Sherman, speaking of "Old Shady," 
 says: "I do not believe that since the Prophet 
 Jeremiah bade the Jews to sing with gladness for 
 Jacob, and to shout among the chiefs of the na- 
 tions, because of their deliverance from the house 
 of bondage, any truer song of gladness ever as- 
 cended from the lips of man than at Vicksburg, 
 where 'Old Shady' sang for us in a voice of pure 
 melody this song of deliverance from the bonds of 
 slavery." 
 
 The general was a great admirer of the negro 
 character, because, as a rule, the colored people 
 were kind and respectful ; and he quotes Henry 
 Clay as saying that his colored boy, whose name 
 is now forgotten, was "the most accomplished gen- 
 tleman in America." General Sherman then 
 adds: ''What more beautiful sentiment than that 
 of my acquaintance, 'Old Shady :' 'Good-bye, 
 Mass' Jeff ; ' 'good-bye, Mis' r Stephens;' ''sense 
 dis niggar for takin' his leavin's' polite and 
 gentle to the end. Burns never said anything 
 better." 
 
 The name of "Old Shady" was I). Blakelcv
 
 152 STOEIES OF GEEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Durant, and after the war he got his "wife and 
 nice little baby out of the lower Canady" and 
 worked on an upper Mississippi steamboat. Gen- 
 eral Sherman once met him on one of the river 
 steamers, when "he sang from the hurricane deck 
 that good old song, which brought tears to the eyes 
 of the passengers. I believe him now dead, but 
 living or dead, he has the love and respect of the 
 old army of the Tennessee which gave him free- 
 dom. 'Good-bye, Massa' Jeff; good-bye, Massa' 
 Stephens ;' was a beautiful expression of the faith- 
 ful family servant who yearned for freedom and 
 a 'dollar a day.' " General Sherman's article for 
 The Review was written in 1888, and Durant did 
 not die until 1896. After working on the river 
 boats for some time, he settled at North Forks, 
 North Dakota, where he established a comfortable 
 home, and where one of his daughters was gradu- 
 ated from the North Dakota state university. 
 
 The tune to which the words of "Old Shady" 
 are now sung was composed by B. R. Ilanby, an 
 interesting character and a man of great musical 
 talent. He wrote "Darling Nellie Gray," by 
 which he is best known. He was just beginning to 
 make a name for himself in the musical world, 
 when he was stricken down in the prime of young 
 manhood.
 
 WALTER KITTREDGE
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 "tenting on the old camp ground." 
 
 ONE Sunday evening in 1896, Mr. Grasheider 
 sang "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" 
 at Trinity church, Chicago, and the effect 
 on the audience was so remarkable that it called 
 out an editorial in The Tribune on the influence 
 of that popular song of the civil war. On the occa- 
 sion referred to, the song moved the fountain of 
 tears in the soldiers and others who were present, 
 recalling, as it did, many a scene in the Southland 
 in the old battle days, so long ago, and yet so near. 
 The melody is of that peculiar quality which will 
 prevent the song from ever growing too old to 
 reach the emotions of the human heart. 
 
 In December, 1894, I lectured in Music Hall, 
 Kansas City, Mo., on "The Story of Patriotic 
 Songs." A special feature of the program was the 
 sinking of some of the great battle hvmns and na-
 
 154 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 tional songs whose history and illustrations of their 
 influence were given in the lecture. The audi- 
 ence was quite large, and among those who honored 
 me with their presence were members from three 
 ex-Confederate posts. After giving the story of 
 "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground," Captain 
 Henry, a popular singer, and editor of a soldier's 
 paper, began the song in a tone full of genuine feel- 
 ing. The audience was requested to join in the 
 refrain : 
 
 '"Many are the hearts that are weary to-night, 
 Wishing for the war to cease." 
 
 It was extremely affecting to hear that large 
 gathering of old soldiers of both armies give ex- 
 pression to their sentiment by singing this song 
 of affection with a perfect unison of hearts as well 
 as of voices. I cannot recall another instance when 
 the chorus of "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" 
 was sung with more soul-feeling, with finer 
 rhythm, or with more exquisite harmony, than by 
 that audience composed of the Bine and the Gray. 
 
 Two or three years ago The Chicago Inter- 
 Ocean printed several communications on the 
 authorship of this song. One writer claimed that 
 it was written on the night of the battle of Cedar 
 Creek Hill, Va., and that Kittredge wrote the 
 vorcK while his comrade, named Russell, com-
 
 "tenting ox the old camp GROUND." 155 
 
 posed the music. In order to get a story of the 
 song stripped of all fiction, I wrote to Mr. 
 Kittredge requesting the essential facts connected 
 with its birth, and on the 2d of May, 1897, he 
 wrote from his home at Reed's Ferry, X. H., as 
 follows : 
 
 "I take this time to give you a little history of 'Tenting 
 on the Old Camp Ground.' I wrote the words and music 
 at the same time one evening, soon expecting to go down 
 South to join the boys in blue, and I desired to have some- 
 thing to sing for them, as that had been my profession, 
 giving concerts for a few years before the war. I think I 
 wrote the song in tears, thinking of my wife and little 
 daughter; but I was not accepted when examined by the 
 physician. He thought I could do my part better to sing 
 for Uncle Sam, so I kept writing and singing for Liberty 
 and Union. The song was composed in 18G3, and published 
 by Ditson, Boston, in 1804. 
 
 "Walter Kittredge." 
 
 Mr. Kittredge was born in Merrimac, X. II., 
 
 in 1882. At the age of twenty he began to give 
 ballad concerts, and four years later he sang with 
 Joshua Hutchinson, of the noted Hutchinson 
 family. After the war broke out in 1861, he com- 
 piled a "Union Song Book," which was only a mod- 
 erate success. His only composition which had 
 merit enough to keep it alive is ''Tenting on the 
 Old Camp Ground." Like many other singers, 
 Kittredge is a "poet"' of one song only, and his 
 fame rests solely upon the product of a sudden
 
 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 "inspiration" if that term is permissible in this 
 connection. 
 
 "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" is not an 
 animating battle piece, of course, but is peculiarly 
 touching in sentiment and plaintive in melody; 
 and many thousands of soldiers, in the monotony 
 of camp life and on weary marches, when thoughts 
 of home burdened the mind, found relief in its 
 pathetic tones and in the delightful harmony of 
 the chorus. Such a song has a powerful hold upon 
 human feelings. It touches the better part of our 
 natures, and "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground," 
 though not a song that has made exciting history, 
 will be long and affectionately associated with the 
 patriotic struggle for liberty and Union.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 SONGS OF CHEER AND PATHOS. 
 
 AMOjSTG the fine songs of cheer which the war 
 times produced, "When Johnny Comes 
 Marching Home" was one of the most popu- 
 lar. It was a great favorite in the homes of the 
 Xorth, and nowhere did it cause more genuine mer- 
 riment than in the army when the boys were either 
 on the march or in camp. The four stanzas are as 
 follows : 
 
 When Johnnie conies marching home again, 
 
 Hurrah ! Hurrah ! 
 We'll give him a hearty welcome then, 
 Hurrah! Hurrah! 
 The men will cheer, the boys will shout, 
 The ladies they will all turn out, 
 And we'll all feel gay 
 When Johnnie conies marching home. 
 
 The old church bell will peal with joy, 
 
 Hurrah! Hurrah! 
 To welcome home our darling boy, 
 
 Hurrah! Hurrah!
 
 58 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 The village lads and lassies gay, 
 With roses they will strew the way, 
 And we'll all feel gay 
 When Johnnie comes marching home. 
 
 Get ready for the jubilee, 
 
 Hurrah ! Hurrah ! 
 We'll give the hero three times three, 
 Hurrah ! Hurrah ! 
 The laurel wreath is ready now 
 To place upon his loyal brow, 
 And we'll all feel gay 
 When Johnnie comes marching home. 
 
 Let love and friendship on that day, 
 
 Hurrah! Hurrah! 
 Their choicest treasures then display, 
 Hurrah ! Hurrah ! 
 And let each other perform some part, 
 To fill with joy the warrior's heart, 
 And we'll all feel gay 
 When Johnnie comes marching home. 
 
 In all the war song books in which "When 
 Johnny Comes Marching Home" is found, the 
 authorship has been credited to "Louis Lambert." 
 The reader will be surprised, perhaps, to know 
 that this was the nom de plume of Patrick S. Gil- 
 more, the great bandmaster and projector of the 
 Boston Peace Jubilee of 1869 and 1872. The 
 song was written in 18G3, and its rousing refrain 
 still gives it a hold on the ears of the people. 
 There is such a rattling good quality in the music,
 
 'H-CUiA^^c^ ^ ^ ^ /i ^ ,
 
 SONGS OF CHEER AND PATHOS. 159 
 
 that it has found its way in several European 
 countries where its use is very frequent, 
 
 Mr. Gilmore, who died in 1892, wrote another 
 song during the war, "Good News from Home," 
 which gained a popularity that was almost world- 
 wide for several years. 
 
 There were two songs widely sung in the South 
 as well as in the Xorth during the war, "When this 
 Cruel War is Over," and "Who Will Care for 
 Mother Now ?" They were written by Charles C. 
 Sawyer of Brooklyn, Xew York, who began 
 writing sonnets when he was twelve years old. 
 During the war he composed many songs, which, 
 on account of the absence of sectional or party 
 sentiment, became great favorites among the 
 soldiers of both armies. 
 
 The first of Mr. Sawyer's songs is entitled, 
 "Weeping, Sad and Lonely," but is more generally 
 known as "When this Cruel War is Over :" 
 
 Dearest love, do you remember 
 
 When we last did meet. 
 How you told me that you loved me, 
 
 Kneeling at my feet ? 
 Oh. how proud you stood before me. 
 
 In your suit of blue. 
 When you vowed to me and country 
 
 Ever to be true.
 
 160 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Weeping, sad and lonely, 
 
 Hopes and fears, how vain! 
 Yet praying, 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 lying 
 
 On the battle plain, 
 Lonely, wounded, even dying, 
 
 Calling, but in vain. 
 
 The second song, "Who Will Care for Mother 
 !Now ?" is as follows : 
 
 Why am 1 so weak and weary? 
 
 See how faint my heated breath. 
 All round 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 truly 
 
 Who will care for mother now? 
 
 Soon with angels I'll be marching, 
 
 With bright laurels on my brow ; 
 1 have for my country fallen. 
 
 Who will care for mother now? 
 Who will comfort her in sorrow? 
 
 Who will dry the falling tear, 
 Gently smooth her wrinkled forehead? 
 
 Who will whisper words of cheer?
 
 SOXGS OF CHEER AND PATHOS. 161 
 
 Even now I think I see her 
 
 Kneeling, praying for me! How 
 Can I leave her in her anguish? 
 
 Who will comfort mother now? 
 
 Let this knapsack be my pillow, 
 
 And my mantle be the sky; 
 Hasten, comrades, to the battle, 
 
 I will like a soldier die. 
 Soon with angels I'll be marching, 
 
 With bright laurels on my brow, 
 I have for my country fallen, 
 
 Who will care for mother now? 
 
 This song is said to have been suggested by the 
 recollection of a bloody battle. Whether this is 
 true or not, makes little difference. It became 
 immensely popular, and it is claimed that these two 
 songs and "Mother Would Comfort Me," also 
 written by Mr. Sawyer, had an aggregate sale of 
 three million copies during the war. 
 
 The Federal Union, a. journal published at 
 Milledgeville, Ga., makes the following comments 
 on Mr. Sawyer's songs of the war : ''Charles 
 Carroll Sawyer is one of the most gifted sons of 
 the ISTorth. His songs gush from his soul as 
 naturally as the water gushes from the mountain 
 rock, and they are just as pure, sweet, and refresh- 
 ing. 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
 
 162 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 sore chords of the Southern heart. We trust that 
 his songs will be sung and his exquisite airs will 
 be warbled and played throughout our sunny 
 regions, and that the heart of the South will rise 
 up to shake hands with all such hearts as his when- 
 ever and wherever they meet them, or from what- 
 soever point of the compass they hail." 
 
 Mr. Sawyer was a very useful war poet, 
 although he did not write anything distinctively 
 great like Julia Ward Howe, George F. Root, 
 Henry C. Work, or Walter Kittredge. But his 
 songs served a noble purpose, and their kindly in- 
 fluence will be long remembered. He died at his 
 home in Brooklyn, October 3d, 1891, at the age of 
 fifty-eight years. 
 
 The incidents given in the preceding pages 
 show how important is the history made by these 
 national songs and battle hymns. The story of 
 their influence should never grow dull to the Amer- 
 ican people. Like the deeds of devotion and hero- 
 ism which saved the Union, these songs should live 
 forever to make the American character devoted 
 and heroic. They teach the highest form of 
 patriotism, from which young men and women of 
 to-day can learn much which will inspire higher 
 manhood and womanhood. 
 
 I think that we are vet too near the civil war
 
 SONGS OF CHEER AND PATHOS. 163 
 
 to comprehend the fulness of its greatness, or the 
 true value of its songs. When that strife, and the 
 patriotic spirit it evoked, are a long distance in 
 the past, the historians will write of these grand 
 songs of the Union in a way which will make them 
 the most interesting of all the great transactions of 
 history. 
 
 In part adopting the sentiment of another, 
 "this America of ours is the Mt. Sinai of the na- 
 tions ;" and if the divine law of liberty, and one 
 flag, and an inseverable national bond of patriot- 
 ism and unity have proceeded out of the terrible 
 thunder and lightning of its great struggle, it is 
 in a large sense because the grand passions of the 
 soul in that conflict, found expression in songs of 
 mighty power, which inspired loyalty and courage, 
 and made the way to victory easier.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 "home, sweet home." 
 
 BIANCOLELLI, the celebrated buffoon, kept 
 Paris audiences in a roar of laughter, while 
 he himself was dying with melancholy. 
 Work wrote the most gladsome song of the rebel- 
 lion period, "Marching Through Georgia," but 
 was the saddest of all our war poets. Blacklock, 
 in his majestic hymn, "Come, O My Soul ! in 
 Sacred Lays," had a beautiful conception of God 
 in the stars and "enthroned amid the radiant 
 spheres," but he never saw the glory of the stars, 
 the beauty of a summer sky, or the splendor of the 
 noonday sun. Payne wrote the loveliest home song 
 the world ever sang, "Home, Sweet Home," but 
 not after the age of thirteen, when his mother died, 
 did he know what it was to have a home, and closed
 
 HOME,, SWEET HOME. 165 
 
 his strange life on the distant shores of the 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 John Howard Payne was born in the city of 
 New York in 1792. At a very early age he devel- 
 oped a taste for literature and the stage. At seven- 
 teen he appeared at the old Park theater in New 
 York, and filled many engagements in other cities 
 as the "American Juvenile Wonder." He went to 
 England when twenty-one, and afterwards to 
 France, and remained abroad for twenty years. 
 In Paris he took up his abode in a garret on the 
 topmost story of a house, and although he seems 
 to have met with fair success in London, he was 
 poor, and many times wretched. During his years 
 in London and Paris he appears to have been dili- 
 gent in the business of writing dramas, particu- 
 larly translating from the French. A batch of 
 these adaptations was sold to Charles Kemble of 
 Covent Garden theater, London, in 1823, for 
 230, of that amount 30 being paid for "Clari ; 
 or the Maid of Milan." It was in this opera that 
 one song was found that melted the heart of Lon- 
 don and of the world, and the plaintive melody is 
 everywhere familiar, and everywhere its tender 
 pathos invests with affectionate regard the memory 
 of John Howard Payne :
 
 166 STOEIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 
 
 Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home ! 
 
 A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, 
 
 Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere, 
 
 Home! home! sweet, sweet home! 
 There's no place like home: there's no place like home. 
 
 An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain, 
 Oh! give me my lowly, thatch 'd cottage again; 
 The birds singing gaily, that come at my call: 
 Give me them, with the peace of mind, dearer than all. 
 
 Home! home! sweet, sweet home! 
 There's no place like home: there's no place like home. 
 
 How sweet 'tis to sit 'neath a fond father'- smile. 
 And the cares of a mother to soothe and beguile. 
 Let others delight 'mid new pleasures to roam, 
 But give me, Oh! give me the pleasures of home. 
 
 Home! home! - :et, - eet home! 
 But give me, Oh! give me the pleasures of home. 
 
 To thee I'll return, over-burdened with care. 
 The heart's dearest ^olaee will smile on me there; 
 No more from ti. I ttage igain will I re 
 Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. 
 Home! home! - ceet, - '. home! 
 's no place like home; there'.- no place like home. 
 
 The opera was enoi prosperous and 
 
 made fortunes for all coi in it except the 
 
 always mfortunate and dependent writer of the 
 song. 
 
 I :. ( rf; has been much - ersy over 
 
 authr rship of th ; >f "Jlome, 
 
 Sweet Home," and to enter into a discussion as to 
 "'-' was the composer, would be needless, as it
 
 "home, SWEET HOME. 167 
 
 would be uninteresting. It is sufficient to quote 
 a brief article from Charles Mackay, the distin- 
 guished English poet and journalist. In writing 
 to The London Telegraph, he says : "With the 
 view of putting an end to these controversies about 
 the authorship of the melody of "Home, Sweet 
 Home' once for all. I write this letter to prove to 
 the most incredulous that the air is English, and 
 was the composition of the very eminent and gifted 
 musician, the late Sir Henry R. Bishop. In one 
 of the many conversations on well-known English 
 melodies with that gentleman, I took occasion to 
 ask him for information on the subject of "Home. 
 Sweet Home,' the authorship of which was often 
 attributed to him. and as often denied by many. 
 who claimed it as a national Sicilian air which Sir 
 Henry had discovered and rearranged. He there- 
 fore favored me with the whole history, lie had 
 been engaged in his early boyhood to edii a collec- 
 tion oi' the national melodies of all countries. In 
 the course of his labors he discovered that lie had 
 no Sicilian melody worthy of reproduction, and 
 Sir Henry thought he would invent one. The re- 
 sult was the now well-known air of 'Home, Sweet 
 Home." which he composed to the verses of an 
 American author. Mr. Howard Payne, then resid- 
 ing in England. When the collection was pub-
 
 168 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL, SONGS. 
 
 lished the melody became so popular that, to use 
 a common phrase, 'it took the town by storm/ and 
 several musical publishers, believing it to be Sici- 
 lian, and non-copyrighted, reissued it." 
 
 The universality of the words made the song 
 greatly successful; and one authority has it that 
 one hundred thousand copies were sold in a single 
 year, and that within two years after its publica- 
 tion the song had yielded the original publishers 
 a net profit of $10,000. It secured for Miss M. 
 Tree, who was the first person to sing "Home, 
 Sweet Home," a husband, and a mansion filled 
 with plenty ; while the writer of the song was in 
 a lonely and almost hopeless struggle with pinch- 
 ing want. It is claimed that he not only lost the 
 25 which was to have been paid him for the copy- 
 right on the twentieth performance of the "Maid 
 of Milan," but was not even complimented with a 
 copy of his own song by the publishers. 
 
 Payne continued his residence in London until 
 1S32, when his ill-success led him to return to the 
 United States. In Xew York, and several other 
 cities, he was honored with several substantial ben- 
 efits. Although he was a fair actor in certain char- 
 acters, and a dramatist of no mean ability, he 
 seems to have been inclined to the heresy that the 
 world owed him a liviu. With all his varied tal-
 
 HOME, SWEET HOME. 169 
 
 ents, which were ample enough to give him success 
 in his profession if rightly applied, the eight or. 
 nine years following his return to this country 
 show an unsatisfactory record. 
 
 In 1841 he visited Washington and made 
 application for a position in the consular service. 
 He was a burden to his friends, and the adminis- 
 tration hesitated to entrust a consulate in his 
 hands. One day while Mr. Webster, secretary of 
 state, was temporarily absent, his son, Fletcher 
 then his private secretary and afterwards com- 
 mander of the famous Twelfth Massachusetts, the 
 "John Brown" regiment of the civil war 
 appointed Payne consul to Tunis, in iSTorthern 
 Africa. This caused no end of trouble. Full of 
 the dignity of his office, he wanted the government 
 to convey him to the scene of his future labors in 
 a vessel of war. President Tyler denied the re- 
 quest, and Payne was in a state of despair, and it 
 was only by the aid of his friends that he was able 
 to cross the Atlantic. He was next heard of in 
 Paris, destitute, and living on a friend. An Amer- 
 ican who had met Payne in Washington, but was 
 only slightly acquainted with him, loaned him 
 money enough to carry him to Tunis. His admin- 
 istration of the office of consul was more in the 
 nature of a farce than serious diplomatic business,
 
 170 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 and shortly after President Polk was inaugurated 
 in 1845, Payne was relieved and returned to the 
 United States. During the following six years he 
 subsisted mainly on the hospitality of his friends, 
 and partly on his deficient income from his con- 
 tributions to the press. 
 
 It was during the closing part of his last visit 
 to this country, in December, 1850, that Payne 
 witnessed the most brilliant and soul-stirring scene 
 in all the course of his checkered life. Jenny 
 Lind, under the management of P. T. Barnum, 
 was making her triumphant tour through 
 the United States. She gave her two concerts 
 in Washington, and one of them was heard 
 in the hall of the house of representatives. 
 The audience at the capitol represented the 
 finest ability in the land. President Pill- 
 more and family, the members of the cabinet, 
 judges of the supreme court, senators and repre- 
 sentatives, and foreign ambassadors, were among 
 those who had assembled to hear the sweetest song 
 angel the world had ever produced. The Phila- 
 delphia. Eecord of that time gave an interesting 
 account of the event: "Xo common poet ever re- 
 ceived a more enviable compliment than was paid 
 to John Howard Payne by Jenny Lind on her last 
 visit to his native land. It was in the great na-
 
 'home, sweet HOME. 171 
 
 tional hall of the city of Washington where the 
 most distinguished audience that had ever been 
 seen in the capital of the republic was assembled. 
 The matchless singer entranced the vast throng 
 with her most exquisite melodies 'Casta Diva/ 
 the 'Flute Song,' the 'Bird Song/ and 'Greeting 
 to America.' But the great feature of the occasion 
 seemed to be an act of inspiration. The singer 
 suddenly turned her face to the part of the audi- 
 torium where Payne was sitting and sang 'Home, 
 Sweet Home' with such pathos and power that a 
 whirlwind of excitement and enthusiasm swept 
 through the vast audience. Daniel Webster him- 
 self almost lost his self-control, and one might 
 readily imagine that Payne thrilled with rapture 
 at this unexpected and magnificent rendition of 
 his own immortal lyric." 
 
 The spirit of Payne was ever restless, and a 
 Whig administration having come into power since 
 his removal from office in 18-45, he asked for a 
 diplomatic post more in harmony with his desires 
 than that in Africa, but in this he failed, and was 
 retnrned to Tunis in 1851 by President Fillmore. 
 But his tenure of office was brief, his death having 
 occurred on the 10th of April, 1852. He was 
 buried in the cemetery of St. George at Tunis, and 
 a suitable monument was erected to his memory, 
 which bore this inscription:
 
 172 STOKIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 "In memory of Colonel John Howard Payne, 
 twice consul of the United States of America for 
 the city and kingdom of Tunis, this stone is here 
 placed by a grateful country. He died in the 
 American Consulate in this city after a tedious 
 illness, April 10, 1852." 
 
 But Payne's "restlessness did not end with his 
 life." His ashes no longer lie on the shores of the 
 Mediterranean. In 1883, through the beneficence 
 of William W. Corcoran, the noted philanthropist 
 of Washington, the remains of Payne were borne 
 across the sea in a French steamer to find a resting 
 place in the capital city of his native land. The 
 burial took place in Oak Hill cemetery, on a beau- 
 tiful Sunday, the 10th of June, 1883, and the ben- 
 ediction of the ceremony was the blending of one 
 thousand voices and instruments in the immortal 
 melody of "Home, Sweet Home." 
 
 The city of Washington had seen many funeral 
 pageants, but none more striking than that of the 
 re-interment of the man who had died long ago, 
 far from his native land, unnoticed and unknown. 
 Presidents and senators and statesmen of every de- 
 gree had been borne through the streets with every 
 sign of respectful sorrow, but never was a dead 
 poet, famous only for a single song, so honored. 
 "There are hundreds of monuments of distin-
 
 'home,, SWEET HOME." 173 
 
 guished men in Washington who were very con- 
 spicuous, and some of whom performed great and 
 memorable services. But no monument there will 
 be visited by a greater throng of pilgrims, and no 
 memory will appeal more tenderly to all of them, 
 than that of the wandering actor who lived and 
 died alone, and of whom nothing is remembered 
 but that he wrote one song." 
 
 An odd story of "Home, Sweet Home" has 
 been going the rounds of the papers during the 
 past few years, and has been copied approvingly 
 by such estimable publications as the Youth's Com- 
 panion and the New York Christian Advocate. 
 Briefly told, the story is as follows : 
 
 "The first time that the tender lyric, 'Home, 
 Sweet Home/ was sung in public was when an In- 
 dian, brooding over the death of his beloved squaw 
 and papoose, committed suicide on the spot where 
 they were buried. 
 
 "It was a time when the boundary lines be- 
 tween Georgia and Tennessee were in dispute, and 
 the half-breeds were constantly making trouble. 
 In order to harmonize contending factions, our 
 government established a trading post there. John 
 Howard Payne appeared on the scene, and on sus- 
 picion of inciting the Indians to insubordination, 
 was arrested and carried to the council house.
 
 174 STOEIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 "With others he witnessed the burial of the 
 heart-broken Indian, and began softly singing to 
 himself the song which has since echoed through 
 every land on earth." The sequel is told by The 
 Atlanta Constitution in these words : 
 
 "General Bishop, who had kept a close 
 scrutiny on his actions, heard the song and called 
 Payne to him. 
 
 " 'Young man,' said the stern old Indian 
 fighter, 'where did you learn that song ?' 
 
 " 'I wrote that song myself,' replied Payne. 
 " 'And where did you get the tune V 
 " 'I composed that also.' 
 " 'Would you let me have a copy of it V 
 " 'Certainly I will.' 
 
 " 'Well, a man who can sing and write like that 
 is no incendiary. Appearances may be against 
 you, but I am going to set you free. I shall write 
 out your discharge immediately, and a pass to 
 carry you anywhere you choose through the 
 nation.' 
 
 "Payne had been housed at the home of a 
 family living near by, and on his return there he 
 exhibited his pass and related the circumstances. 
 That was the first time that 'Home, Sweet Home' 
 had ever been sung in public." 
 
 The sentiment of the story may be charming,
 
 "home, SWEET HOME." 175 
 
 but the whole transaction, as related by The Con- 
 stitution, is a piece of wretched fiction. The nar- 
 rative does not rise to the level of even tradition 
 or legend. That such an incident could not have 
 taken place is seen from the fact that Payne went 
 to Europe in 1813, when he was twenty-one years 
 old, and remained there until 1832. He wrote 
 ''Home, Sweet Home" in Paris when making a 
 translation of the "Maid of Milan," and the song 
 was first sung at Covent Garden theater, London, 
 on the 8th of May, 1823. When Payne first 
 visited the United States after writing the song, he 
 was forty years old, and therefore could not be the 
 young man of the Indian story. More than that, 
 Payne never was so idiotic as to claim that he com- 
 posed the melody of the song. 
 
 The following incident illustrating the tri- 
 umph of "Home, Sweet Home" is a fitting close 
 to the story of the song : 
 
 In Xorthern Georgia during the civil war the 
 two great armies confronted each other, and had 
 rested on their arms for the night. Their skir- 
 mishing lines had met during the day, and a battle 
 was imminent on the morrow. At eight o'clock 
 one of the Federal bands struck up "The Star 
 Spangled Banner," which evoked prolonged 
 cheers from the Union side. When its echoes were
 
 176 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 lost in the distance the Confederate bands started 
 the sprightly air of "Dixie," which was welcomed 
 with a vigorous Southern yell. The Federals re- 
 plied with "Hail Columbia," and in quick response 
 came "Maryland, My Maryland." "Yankee 
 Doodle" then broke out upon the evening air ; the 
 other side sent back the "Bonnie Blue Flag," and 
 the surrounding hills echoed with the "Battle 
 Hymn of the Republic." The moments of im- 
 pressive silence which followed this friendly con- 
 test of war tunes were broken only by the Con- 
 federate bands, when "calm on the listening ear of 
 night," came the soft, sweet strains of "Home, 
 Sweet Home." Its exquisite sentiment, its 
 pathetic tenderness, vividly recalled to the minds 
 of the soldiers the dearest spot on earth, where they 
 had left their hearts ; and the Union bands joined 
 in the music of the universal song. For the mo- 
 ment sectional lines were obliterated, and passion 
 was softened by the controlling and melting tones 
 of the world's great refrain : 
 
 "Home! home! sweet, sweet home! 
 There's no place like home; there's no place like home." 
 
 Then followed an outburst of applause from the 
 Blue and the Gray, and for once their hearts beat 
 in unison, and the voices of the two armies rose in 
 sweet concord in that deathless sons; which <zoes to
 
 HOME, SWEET HOME. 177 
 
 the human heart wherever love and home are 
 known. There was no other power outside of the 
 realm of the miraculous but "Home, Sweet Home," 
 that could have united the hearts and voices of 
 those two hostile armies.
 
 T 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 SOXGS OF THE SOUTH "DIXIE." 
 
 WO or three years ago the Southern papers 
 were discussing the interesting fact that com- 
 paratively few of the songs of the South are 
 the products of Southern writers. A woman long 
 a resident of Tennessee, and who has given the 
 subject much careful study, says the characteristic 
 Southern songs, such as "Suwannee River," "Old 
 Folks at Home," "]STellie Gray," "Massa's in the 
 Cold, Cold Ground," and other familiar songs 
 cherished by Southern people, were written in the 
 North. She adds that even the "Mocking Bird," 
 and the beautiful music of "Maryland, My Mary- 
 land," were written by a Philadelphian, and that 
 the composer of "Dixie" is a man who, so far as 
 known, never lived in Dixie. 
 
 It is extraordinary that the South, with its 
 well known literary taste, should be deficient in
 
 DANIEL It. KMMKTT.
 
 'HOME, SWEET HOME. 179 
 
 songs. The explanation given by The Xashville 
 Banner is the lack of musical education among the 
 men of the South. Musical advantages are offered 
 to the Southern girls, but Southern young men are 
 seldom encouraged to take a musical education. 
 The Banner evidently believes that the successful 
 song writers are limited to the male persuasion. 
 While there are some notable exceptions, history 
 shows this to be substantially true. It is, neverthe- 
 less, a little remarkable, as one writer says, that a 
 great section of the country, having such distinc- 
 tive traits and characteristics, should be so little 
 represented by native song writers. 
 
 It is conceded on all hands that "Dixie'' is the 
 most popular of the songs of the South. It was 
 not a product of the war, and was not made in the 
 South ; but a peculiar and fortuitous circumstance 
 led to its adoption by the Confederate army in 
 1861, and it soon carried the people into a state 
 of impassioned emotion, and to-day its popularity 
 is so great that in reality it has become one of the 
 songs of the Union. President Lincoln had great 
 admiration for the time, possibly because he heard 
 if. sung to Republican words in the never-to-be- 
 forgotten campaign of LS60. Shortly after the 
 surrender at Appomattox, he requested the bund 
 to play ''Dixie/' pleasantly remarking that "as we
 
 180 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SOXGS. 
 
 have captured the Confederate army, we have also 
 captured the Confederate tune, and both belong 
 to us." 
 
 There has been considerable dispute over 
 the authorship of "Dixie," and to make its inter- 
 esting story as clear and concise as possible, and 
 at the same time true to history, I quote from an 
 article written in 1895 by Mr. Edward W. Bok, 
 the distinguished editor of The Ladies' Home 
 Journal, and first published, I believe, in The 
 Pittsburg Dispatch : 
 
 "It is a fact not widely known that Daniel D. 
 Emmett, the venerable and retired minstrel, author 
 of 'Dixie,' is now living in Mount Vernon, Ohio. 
 If he survives another anniversary of his birth he 
 will round out eighty years, having been born in 
 the place where he lives on October 29, 1815. 
 
 "Emmett is full of little anecdotes of the two 
 great Shermans, William T. and John, who used 
 to go to school at Gambier, near Mount Vernon, 
 and has many fond recollections of romps about 
 the hills with them, of the great times they had at 
 playing 'shinney,' and how the Sherman boys were 
 never allowed both to be on the same side, for they 
 were both leaders and were better separated and 
 leading opposite forces. 
 
 "Mr. Emmett savs that it was a fashion in
 
 SONGS OF THE SOUTH DIXIE. 181 
 
 those days among the young people to try their 
 skill at making verses and to sing them to some 
 popular tune. 'Jim Crow' was a favorite in those 
 days, and the boys and girls found great delight 
 in fitting and rhyming words to sing to that tune. 
 In this way, Mr. Emmett formed a taste for verse- 
 making and singing, which later led him to min- 
 strelsy. Mr. Emmett made his own verses and 
 sang them to some popular tune. lie traveled all 
 over the United States, and was the favorite min- 
 strel everywhere he went. His understanding of 
 the negro dialect was perfect, as was likewise his 
 rendering. His love of minstrelsy is still visible 
 in him. His voice is thoroughly trained to the 
 sweet tone of the melodious darky's voice, and a 
 few old darky expressions and songs from him 
 show at once that he has not lost his old-time under- 
 standing of them. 
 
 " 'Dixie Land,' which is really the proper name 
 of the song, was written by Emmett in 1859, while 
 he was a member of the celebrated 'Bryant's Min- 
 strels,' which then held forth at Xo. 472 Broad- 
 way, in Xew York City. His engagement with 
 them was to the effect that he should hold himself 
 in readiness to compose for them a new 'walk- 
 around' whenever called upon to do so, and to sing 
 the same at the close of their performance. The
 
 182 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 circumstances attending the composition of 'Dixie' 
 are interesting: One Saturday night after a per- 
 formance Mr. Emmett left the hall and was pro- 
 ceeding homeward when he was overtaken by Jerry 
 Bryant and asked to make a 'hooray' and bring it 
 to the rehearsal Monday morning. Mr. Emmett 
 replied that it was a short time in which to make a 
 good one, but that he would do his best to please 
 Mr. Bryant. He composed the 'walk-around' next 
 day, Sunday, and took it to the rehearsal Monday 
 morning, music and words complete. The tune 
 and words of 'Dixie' as now sung are Mr. Emmett's 
 exactly as he then wrote them. At times different 
 aspirants for its authorship have been cut short in 
 their attempts to lay claim to it by the timely inter- 
 ference of friends of the composer." 
 
 The following is the full text of the original 
 son, as written by Mr. Emmett : 
 
 I wish I was in de land ob cotton, old times dar are not 
 forgotten ; 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land! 
 In Dixie land whar I was born in, early on one frosty 
 mornin', 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land ! 
 
 Den I wish I was in Dixie, hooray! hooray! 
 
 In Dixie land I'll took my stand, to lib and die in Dixie. 
 
 Away, away, away down south in Dixie ! 
 
 Away, away, away down south in Dixie!
 
 SOXGS OF THE SOUTH DIXIE. 183 
 
 Ole missus marry "Will-de-weaber"; Willum was a gay 
 deceaber ; 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land! 
 But when he put his arm around her, he smiled as fierce as 
 a forty-pounder; 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land! 
 
 His face was sharp as a butcher's cleaber, but dat did not 
 seem to greab her ; 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land! 
 Ole missus acted de foolish part, and died for a man dat 
 broke her heart; 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land! 
 
 Now here's health to de next ole missus, an' all de gals dat 
 want to kiss us; 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land! 
 But if you want to drive 'way sorrow, come an' hear dis 
 song to-morrow: 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land ! 
 
 Dar's buckwheat cakes an' Injin batter, makes you fat or a 
 little fatter ; 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land ! 
 Den hoe it down an' scratch your grabble, to Dixie's land 
 I'm bound to trabble; 
 Look away, look away, look away, Dixie land! 
 
 ''Mr. Emmett has had numerous applications 
 from many eminent people all over the country for 
 the original copy as a curiosity, one of them com- 
 ing from Mrs. General Sherman. 
 
 "From the time it was first sung at Bryant's 
 hall in Xew York, it became a favorite all over the 
 United States, as fast as minstrel troupes could 
 bring it before the people. It is interesting to
 
 184 STOKIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SOXGS. 
 
 know how 'Dixie' became the Southern war song. 
 A spectacular performance was being given in 
 New Orleans late in the fall of 1860. Each part 
 had been filled ; all that was lacking was a national 
 march and song for the grand chorus, a part the 
 leader had omitted till the very last moment. A 
 great many marches and songs were tried, but none 
 could be decided upon. 'Dixie' was suggested and 
 tried, and all were so enthusiastic over it that it 
 was at once adopted and given in the performance. 
 Immediately it was taken up by the populace, and 
 sung in the streets, in homes and concert, halls 
 daily. It was taken to the battlefields and there 
 established as the Southern Confederate war song. 
 When asked what suggested the words and tune of 
 'Dixie,' Mr. Emmett said that when the cold 
 wintry days of the North set in all minstrels had 
 a great desire to go to 'Dixie's land' to escape the 
 hardships and cold. On a cold day a common say- 
 ing was, as Mr. Emmett expresses it, 'O ! I wish I 
 was in Dixie's land,' and with this as a key he con- 
 eluded with the words as given above. The tune 
 of 'Dixie' was composed in much the same way; 
 one bar of music set the key for the immortal 
 'Dixie.' " 
 
 The pathetic part of Mr. Emmett's life is thus 
 told bv Mr. Bok :
 
 SONGS OF THE SOUTH DIXIE. 185 
 
 "Emmett, as I have said at the beginning of 
 this article, is now nearly eighty years old, but he 
 is a 'young old man/ whose alertness of mind im- 
 presses one as that of a younger man. Unfortun- 
 ately for him, his lot in life is not a pleasant one. 
 Unable to work, lie derives a very rude subsist- 
 ence. He is practically forsaken, as well as poor. 
 Few of the outside world know that he is alive ; 
 only the neighbors know that he is the man who, 
 through one of his songs, moved millions of hearts 
 and helped to fight and win many battles. He is 
 a prophet in his own country. But this is all. 
 Thousands who know the words of his famous 
 song, know not the name of its composer. To all 
 intents and purposes, he is forgotten. And, what 
 is sadder still, he carries the hard burdens of pov- 
 erty. Practically, his only present return for his 
 song is the knowledge of the service it rendered in 
 troublous times. Yet, it seems to me, that this man 
 ought not to be entirely overlooked by the nation 
 which he served so well." 
 
 It was not long after the Xew Orleans incident 
 that the tune of "Dixie" became widespread in its 
 popularity, and other words were written to fit the 
 measure. As early as May 30th, 1861, Albert 
 Pike, then of Arkansas, (born in Boston in 1809,) 
 published in The Xatchez Courier a song which
 
 1S6 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 was frequently used in the Confederate army, and 
 is, perhaps, the most meritorious of all the words 
 set to that stirring tune : 
 
 Southrons, hear your country call you! 
 Up, lest worse than death befall you ! 
 
 To arms ! To arms ! To arms, in Dixie ! 
 Lo! all the beacon fires are lighted 
 Let all hearts be now united! 
 
 To arms ! To arms ! To arms, in Dixie ! 
 Advance the flag of Dixie! 
 Hurrah! Hurrah! 
 For Dixie's land we take our stand, 
 And live or die for Dixie ! 
 
 To arms! To arms! 
 And conquer peace for Dixie! 
 
 To arms ! To arms ! 
 And conquer peace for Dixie! 
 
 Hear the Northern thunders mutter ! 
 Northern flags in South winds flutter ! 
 
 To arms ! 
 Send them back your fierce defiance ! 
 Stamp upon the accursed alliance! 
 
 To arms! 
 Advance the flag of Dixie! 
 
 Fear no danger ! Shun no labor ! 
 Lift up rifle, pike, and sabre! 
 
 To arms ! 
 
 Shoulder pressing close to shoulder, 
 
 Let the odds make each heart bolder ! 
 
 To arms ! 
 
 Advance the flag of Dixie ! 
 
 How the South's great heart rejoices, 
 At your cannons' ringing voices ! 
 To arms !
 
 SONGS OF THE SOUTH DIXIE. 187 
 
 For faith betrayed, and pledges broken, 
 Wrongs inflicted, insults spoken, 
 To arms ! 
 Advance the flag of Dixie! 
 
 Strong as lions, swift as eagles, 
 
 Back to their kennels hunt these beagles! 
 
 To arms ! 
 Cut the unequal bonds asunder! 
 Let them hence each other plunder ! 
 
 To arms ! 
 Advance the flag of Dixie! 
 
 Swear upon your country's altar 
 Never to submit or falter! 
 
 To arms ! 
 Till the spoilers are defeated, 
 Till the Lord's work is completed. 
 
 To arms ! 
 Advance the flag of Dixie! 
 
 Halt not till our Federation 
 
 Secures from earth's powers its station ! 
 
 To arms! 
 Then at peace, and crowned with glory, 
 Hear your children tell the story! 
 
 To arms ! 
 Advance the flag of Dixie! 
 
 If the loved ones weep in sadness. 
 Victory soon will bring them gladness. 
 
 To arms ! 
 Exultant pride soon vanish sorrow; 
 Smiles chase tears away to-morrow. 
 
 To arms ! 
 Advance the flag of Dixie ! 
 
 General Pike was an able lawyer, a poet of ex- 
 cellent repute, a philologist of no mean ability,
 
 188 STORIES OF GEEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 and at one time was the highest Masonic dignitary 
 in the United States. He was a veteran of the 
 Mexican war, and became a brigadier general in 
 the war between the states. A few years after the 
 surrender he removed to Washington, where he 
 engaged in the profession of law ; but retired in 
 1880, and devoted himself to literature. He pub- 
 lished many volumes, including his poems, law re- 
 ports, "Masonic Statutes and Regulations," and 
 "Morals and Dogma of Free Masonry ;" and at his 
 death in Washington, on the 1st of April, 1891, 
 he left eighteen volumes of manuscript without a 
 single blemish or erasure. 
 
 Another song set to the tune of "Dixie," and 
 which became very popular in the South, appeared 
 anonymously in The Charleston Mercury almost 
 simultaneously with General Pike's poem. It was 
 called "The Star of the West," and ran as follows: 
 
 I wish I was in de land o' cotton, 
 Old times dar ain't not forgotten 
 
 Look away, look away, lads in gray! 
 In Dixie land whar 1 was born in, 
 Early on one frosty mornin' 
 
 Look away, look away, lads in gray! 
 
 (Chorus Den I wish 1 was in Dixie.) 
 
 In Dixie land dat frosty mornin', 
 Jis 'bout de time de day was dawnin' 
 Look away, look away, lads in gray!
 
 SONGS OF THE SOUTH DIXIE. 189 
 
 De signal fire from de East bin roarin', 
 House up, Dixie, no more snorin' 
 
 Look away, look away, lads in gray ! 
 
 Dat rocket high a-blazing in de sky, 
 
 'Tis de sign dat de snobbies am comin' up nigh 
 
 Look away, look away, lads in gray! 
 Dey bin braggin' long, if Ave dare to shoot a shot, 
 Dey comin' up strong and dey'll send us all to pot. 
 
 Fire away, fire away, lads in gray ! 
 
 Fanny J. Crosby, the blind hymnist, whose 
 
 gospel songs are popular in all English-speaking 
 
 countries, wrote words to the music of "Dixie," 
 
 which began : 
 
 "Oh! ye patriots to the battle, 
 Hear Fort Moultrie's cannon rattle; 
 Then away, then away, then away to the fight!" 
 
 It is a very good song, but never was adopted by 
 the Union army, and was seldom used in the homes 
 of the people in the Xorth. 
 
 So far as I can learn, Mr. Emmett never 
 clearly interpreted the name which is inseparably 
 connected with his famous song. What did he 
 mean by the word "Dixie" as applied to the South ? 
 Xewspapers have attempted to supply the informa- 
 tion, but there is a wide disagreement among them. 
 One writer in The Chicago Times-Herald- M. L. 
 Rayne says: "Dixie did not originate in the 
 South, as is popularly believed, but was in use in 
 Xorthern circuses that had traveled in the South
 
 190 STOKIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 and enjoyed Southern warmth and hospitality. 
 When the cold winds of the Xorthern states blew 
 through the circus tents the boys would shiver and 
 say, 'I wish I was in Dixie/ Dixie being the dimin- 
 utive for Dixon south of Mason and Dixon's 
 line." The readers will probably remember that 
 Mason and Dixon's line was established by two 
 Englishmen Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon 
 in 1763-67. They were commissioned by the 
 British government to survey the boundary line 
 between Maryland and Pennsylvania, which was 
 made to extend westward from the Delaware river 
 245 miles. The line drawn by these two astron- 
 omers and surveyors became known as '"Mason and 
 Dixon's line," and was made famous in the history 
 of the United States as the dividing line between 
 the free and the slave states. Whether Mr. 
 Emmett used this word '"Dixie" in that sense can 
 be only conjectured. 
 
 An article in The Xew York Musical Age says 
 that Dixie was a Long Island farmer, and at his 
 farm, runaway negroes always found shelter and 
 kind treatment. Many times before the war a 
 wife would escape to this blissful place; then, in 
 the mysterous way known only to negroes, the 
 whisper would run from mouth to mouth that she 
 was in "Dixieland," and von can imagine what the
 
 SOXGS OF THE SOUTH DIXIE. 191 
 
 song was to that husband as he toiled in the lazy 
 sunshine waiting for a chance to join her. 
 
 The Century Cyclopedia of Names states that 
 "Dixie land" is said to have been originally a 
 negro name for New York or Manhattan Island, 
 and later applied to the South. The phrase 
 originated in New York very early in the century, 
 and when it developed into a song, or rather into 
 many songs, the refrain usually contained the word 
 "Dixie," or "Dixie Land." It is claimed, also, 
 that the name first came into use when Texas was 
 admitted into the Union in 1845, and that the 
 Negroes sang of it as "Dixie." 
 
 In Bryant's "Songs from Dixie's Land" is a 
 note to the effect that in the popular mythology of 
 New York City, Dixie was the negro's paradise on 
 earth in times when slavery and the slave trade 
 were flourishing in that quarter. Dixie owned a 
 tract of land on Manhattan Island, and also a large 
 number of slaves ; and the slaves increasing faster 
 than the land, an emigration ensued such as has 
 taken place in Virginia and other states. Natur- 
 ally, the Negroes who left it for distant parts 
 looked to it as a place of unalloyed happiness, and 
 it was the "old Virginny" of the Negroes of that 
 day. Hence "Dixie" became synonymous with an 
 ideal locality combining ineffable happiness and
 
 192 STORIES OF GKEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 every imaginable requisite of earthly beatitude. 
 The music of "Dixie" is so pleasing to the 
 people that it has become almost a universal tune 
 without words. As a piece of national music it 
 holds a place close to "Yankee Doodle." It may 
 be hardly more than a jig, as the Confederate 
 officer called it, but there is in it that indefinable 
 quality that made it alluring from the commence- 
 ment of its career. And in the war with Spain, 
 in far off Manila, in the battles around Santiago, 
 in the camps in Porto Rico, in marches by land, 
 in travels by sea, the soldiers were cheered by the 
 strains of "Dixie." Its beginning was in the 
 minstrel show, it was dedicated as a battle song in 
 the great uprising of the South, and in its last 
 estate it has a place among the enduring music of 
 the Union.
 
 JAMK.S K. k.WMAI.I..
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 "MAEYLAND, MY MARYLAND." 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL pronounced 
 "Maryland, My Maryland," the finest poem 
 (not a song) which the civil war produced. 
 Some may regard this as too high praise, but the 
 fact remains that it is one of the most refined and 
 artistic poetical productions of the war between the 
 states, and has given lasting fame to its author 
 James Ryder Randall. 
 
 Some one has said that every song has what 
 may be called a personal history, or if the expres- 
 sion is preferable, a secret history. Therefore, 
 when a poet has written a war lyric which has 
 literary finish, and qualities that make it live, no 
 matter on what side were his sympathies in that 
 memorable contest which displayed the supreme 
 valor of the American soldier, the readers of the
 
 194 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SOXGS. 
 
 story of those strange times, and the lovers of good 
 literature, have a fervent wish to know something 
 of the heart experience that inspired it. 
 
 Mr. Randall was born in Baltimore on the first 
 day of 1839. A part of his college education was 
 received at Georgetown, District of Columbia. A 
 year or two before the war broke out he went to 
 Xew Orleans and became a contributor to The 
 Daily Delta. He afterwards accepted the position 
 of professor of English literature in a small college 
 at Pointe Coupee, in Louisiana, about one hundred 
 miles above Xew Orleans. He was at the college 
 in April, 1861, when he read in The Delta, that the 
 Sixth Massachusetts infantry had been attacked 
 while marching through the streets of Baltimore on 
 their way to the South. I will now let Mr. 
 Randall tell the interesting personal history of his 
 song as communicated to Mr. Brander Matthews, 
 for The Century Magazine : 
 
 "This account excited me greatly ; I had long 
 been absent from my native city, and the startling 
 event there inflamed my mind. That nio-ht 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 rose, lit 
 a candle, and went to my desk. Some powerful 
 spirit appeared to possess me, and almost involun-
 
 MARYLAND, MY MARYLAND. 195 
 
 tarily I proceeded to write the song of 'My Mary- 
 land.' I remember that the idea appeared first to 
 take shape as music in the brain some wild air 
 that I cannot now recall. The whole poem was 
 dashed off rapidly when once begun. It was not 
 composed in cold blood, but under what may be 
 called a conflagration of the senses, if not an inspir- 
 ation of the intellect. I was stirred to a desire for 
 some way of linking my name with that 
 of my native state, if not 'with my Lord's 
 language.' But I never expected to do this 
 with one single, supreme effort, and no one 
 was more surprised than I was at the wide- 
 spread and instantaneous popularity of the 
 lyric I had been so strangely stimulated to 
 write. The next morning the poem was read to 
 the college boys, and at their suggestion it was sent 
 to The Delta, in which it was first printed, and 
 from which it was copied into nearly every 
 Southern journal. I did not concern myself 
 much about it; but very soon, from all parts of 
 the country, there was borne to me, in my remote 
 place of residence, evidence that I made a great 
 hit, and that, whatever might be the fate of the 
 Confederacy, the song would survive it." 
 The following is the poem in full :
 
 196 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 The despot's heel is on thy shore, 
 
 Maryland ! 
 His touch is at thy temple door, 
 
 Maryland ! 
 Avenge the patriotic gore 
 That necked the streets of Baltimore, 
 And be the battle queen of yore, 
 Maryland, my Maryland! 
 
 Hark to thy wandering son's appeal, 
 
 Maryland ! 
 My mother state ! To thee I kneel, 
 
 Maryland ! 
 For life and death, for woe and 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, for thy shield is bright and strong, 
 
 Maryland ! 
 Come, for thy dalliance does thee wrong, 
 
 Maryland ! 
 Come to thine own heroic throng 
 That stalks with liberty along, 
 And give a new key to thy song, 
 
 Maryland, my Maryland! 
 I see the blush upon thy cheek. 
 
 Maryland! 
 But thou wast ever bravely meek. 
 
 Maryland!
 
 MARYLAND, MY MARYLAND. 197 
 
 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 blade, the shot, 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 t he Northern scum! 
 She breathes, she burns! She'll come, she'll come! 
 
 Maryland, my Maryland! 
 
 When a great lyric has been burn in such a time 
 as that described by Mr. Randall, there always 
 comes a desire to voice it in song'. "Music is the 
 universal language of the soul." It was in the 
 following June that a glee club held a meeting at 
 the Baltimore home of jliss Hetty Cary, who 
 afterwards became the wife 1 of Professor II . 
 Xewell Martin, the distinguished biologist and 
 author at Johns Hopkins University. Miss 
 Cary's home was the gathering place of many 
 Baltimore sympathizers with the cause of the 
 South, and it was for the purpose of considering
 
 198 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 the ways and means of assisting the Confederacy 
 that the clnb held the meeting which became so 
 memorable in its results. Miss Cary had read 
 "Maryland, My Maryland/' in the papers, and 
 when her sister, Miss Jenny, who had charge of the 
 program, searched hopelessly for something to sing 
 which would encourage and fire the Southern 
 heart, Miss Hetty began to recite the poem in a 
 tone earnest and eloquent, when her sister 
 exclaimed, "Lauriger Horatius," and in a few 
 moments the burning words had found their mate 
 and that night, "Maryland, My Maryland" to 
 use an expression of Alexander H. Stephens, the 
 Confederate vice-president became "the Mar- 
 seillaise of the Confederacy." "Lauriger Hora- 
 tius" is said to be a German composition, and for 
 some time had been popular as a college tune. 
 
 A story is related that shortly after the words 
 of the song were inherently wedded to the music 
 at the home of the Gary's, in Baltimore, a remark- 
 able scene occurred at Manassas, the famous battle- 
 field of Bull Run. While visiting friends in the 
 army the two sisters were serenaded by the now 
 celebrated Washington artillery of [N^ew Orleans. 
 When the band ceased playing, one of the officers 
 exclaimed, "Let's hear a woman's voice." Miss 
 Jenny Gary, standing in the front door, sang,
 
 MARYLAND, MY MARYLAND. 199 
 
 "My Maryland." The refrain was speedly taken 
 up by hundreds of Southern soldiers, and from 
 that moment the verses grew into a power. It was 
 the birth of the song in the army. 
 
 Touching the Southern heart to fervent 
 enthusiasm, "Maryland, My Maryland," was to 
 the South what "John Brown's Body" was to the 
 North. The popularity of each was instantaneous 
 and intense. jSo song of the South so shared the 
 glory of "Dixie" as did "Maryland, My Mary- 
 land." Guards who patrolled the city of Balti- 
 more, during the war, have said that in many a 
 home, supposed to be neutral, at midnight and with 
 suppressed zeal, they heard the ruffled music of the 
 song. 
 
 Colonel Randall, by which title he is now 
 known among the Southern people, lives at 
 Augusta, Ga. Recently he visited Savannah, and 
 was serenaded by the First Maryland regiment 
 band, and I cannot close the story of "Maryland, 
 My Maryland," more appropriately than by quot- 
 ing from The Savannah Press, of the 9th of 
 January, 1899, a portion of a personal tribute to 
 him: 
 
 "He is a poet who has no living equal on this 
 side of the Atlantic, and his 'Maryland, My Mary- 
 land' stands out as the most beautiful war lyric of
 
 200 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 modern times. If it had been written in a 
 Northern state, during that stirring period, 
 Colonel Randall would have been idolized like 
 Whittier and Lowell. It is impossible to read it 
 even now in the cool aftermath of the civil war 
 without feeling the fine frenzy which stimulated 
 poets and people at that time. James R. Randall 
 is a man of lovable character and of loyal traits. 
 Maryland should make him a 'patron saint.' Xo 
 one ever thinks of the state without recalling the 
 poem, and Baltimore lost her brightest genius when 
 she allowed Randall to wander into Georgia. If 
 Edgar Poe had not already won the primacy for 
 Maryland in poesy and letters, James R. Randall 
 would have secured it for that state ; for Randall 
 has immortalized the name of Maryland. The 
 poem was written in Louisiana and published in 
 The Xew Orleans Delta, and Randall awoke one 
 morning to find himself famous. The stirring Ger- 
 man tune, 'Tannenbaum,' was chosen as the fitting 
 accompaniment of 'Maryland.' it was after the 
 battle of Manassas that some [Maryland ladies 
 visited the headquarters of General Beauregard, 
 and sang 'Maryland, My Maryland.' The soldiers 
 caught up the refrain and the whole camp rang 
 with the soulful melody. From that time 'Mary- 
 land' became a national war sons' in the South."
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE UOXXIE BLUE FLAG. 
 
 DURING the exciting days of the civil war 
 when songs played an important part in 
 quickening the steps of the army and stimu- 
 lating courage, the "Bonnie Blue Flag" was very 
 useful in the South, hut today it is hardly more 
 than a remembrance of those troublous times. 
 James R. Randall's native modesty led him to say 
 in a letter to Mr. Brander Matthews, quoted in 
 Tlit' Century Magazine, that "Dixie" and the 
 "Bonnie Blue Flag"' were the two most popular 
 songs of the Confederacy. The latter did have 
 a large "run" during the heat of the conflict, hut 
 when the war ended and the cause of the South was 
 lost, there was nothing either in the words or music 
 of the song to make it a worthy memento of the 
 fated struggle through which the Southern people 
 had patiently and intrepidly passed.
 
 202 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL, SONGS. 
 
 The melody of the "Bonnie Blue Flag" is of 
 Irish origin, and is said to have been composed, or 
 rather adapted, by Henry McCarthy. One 
 authority says he was a Scotch actor, while another 
 writes of him as an Irish comedian. There is no 
 doubt that the air is purely Irish as it is very 
 evident that it was taken from the "Irish Jaunting 
 Car." There is also a conflict of statement as to 
 the time the song was first sung. The weight of 
 authority, however, renders it reasonably safe to 
 say that it was first given to the public at the 
 Variety theater in ISTew Orleans, during the latter 
 part of 1861. The "Bonnie Blue Flag" became 
 very popular throughout the South, and in Xew 
 Orleans it was sung so frequently and with such 
 perplexing enthusiasm by the Southern sympa- 
 thizers, that when General Butler had possession 
 of the city in 1862, he issued an order which 
 imposed a fine of twenty-five dollars upon every 
 man or woman who should be heard singing or 
 playing it. In addition to this penalty, all the 
 copies of the song that could be found were des- 
 troyed, and publishers were prohibited from print- 
 ing it in any form. That the readers may under- 
 stand the bright spirit and swinging movement of 
 the song, I give it in full :
 
 THE BOXXIE BLUE FLAG. 203 
 
 We are a band of brothers and native to the soil, 
 
 Fighting for our liberty with treasure, blood and toil, 
 
 And when our rights were threatened the cry rose near and 
 
 far- 
 Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a Single Star. 
 
 Hurrah, hurrah, for Southern rights hurrah! 
 
 Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a Single Star. 
 
 First, gallant South Carolina nobly made the stand; 
 Then came Alabama, who took her by the hand; 
 Next, quickly Mississippi, Georgia and Florida, 
 All rais'd on high the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a Single 
 Star. 
 
 Ye men of valor, gather round the Banner of the Bight, 
 Texas and fair Louisiana, join us in the fight; 
 Davis, our loved president, and Stephens, statesman rare, 
 Xow rally round the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a Single 
 Star. 
 
 And here's to brave Virginia! the Old Dominion State 
 With the young Confederacy at length has linked her fate; 
 Impell'd by her example, now other states prepare 
 To hoist on high the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a Single 
 
 Star. 
 
 Then cheer, boys, raise the joyous shout, 
 
 For Arkansas and North Carolina now have both gone out; 
 And let another rousing cheer for Tennessee be given, 
 The Single Star of the Bonnie Blue Flag has grown to be 
 Eleven. 
 
 Then here's to our Confederacy, strong we are and brave, 
 Like patriots of old, we'll fight our heritage to save; 
 And rather than submit to shame, to die we would prefer, 
 So cheer for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a Single Star.
 
 204 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 The general opinion is that Mr. McCarthy 
 wrote the words, but one author gives the author- 
 ship to Mrs. Annie Chambers-Ketchum, who was 
 one of the most popular poets in the South at the 
 breaking out of the war. She was born in 
 Kentucky in 1824. Her husband, who was an 
 officer in the Confederate army, was severely 
 wounded at the battle of Shiloh, in April, 1862, 
 and died from the effects thereof the following 
 year. She wrote many poems which were pub- 
 lished in the book form, and is also the author of 
 several works on teaching, and has made many 
 translations from the Latin, German and French. 
 Mrs. Ketchum, who is now living in New York 
 City, does not claim the authorship of the song 
 which has been ascribed to her. 
 
 A prominent Southern writer, himself a poet 
 of high order, writes me under the date of January 
 31, 1899 : "I cannot give you any definite state- 
 ment about the words of the 'Bonnie Blue Flag.' 
 I suppose Henry McCarthy is as much entitled to 
 the authorship as anybody. As a bit of verse it 
 is mere drivel and trash. I do not know of any 
 self-respecting literary person who would father or 
 mother it." 
 
 The government at Washington has done a 
 praiseworthy work in procuring for the new
 
 THE BONNIE BLUE FLAG. 205 
 
 library of Congress, a collection of Confederate 
 music that is to say, music printed in various 
 parts of the South during the civil war. Some of 
 these songs are reprints from music preceding the 
 war. ''Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still," 
 "Good-by, Sweetheart," "Call Me Kot Back From 
 the Echoless Shore," and many of Foster's 
 melodies are among the collection. There is the 
 famous pathetic anthem, "Lorena," which had a 
 large run in the Confederacy. "Maryland, My 
 Maryland," is in two forms one lithographed 
 handwriting on flimsy paper, and the other some- 
 what more ambiguous, printed in Augusta and 
 certified to as being the "only edition that has the 
 author's approval." 
 
 One Confederate anthem has for a frontispiece 
 a cavalier holding the Southern standard, 
 inscribed, "God Save the South." There is a 
 ballad of the times called "Pray, Maiden, Pray ! 
 Pray for the Southern Land of Streams and Sunlit 
 Pines;" a song of "The Southern Soldier Boy," 
 to the tune of "The Boy with the Auburn Hair;" 
 a ''Virginia Marseillaise," calling "Brothers True 
 to Guard on the Trenchant Brand;" a Southern 
 adaptation of "When This Cruel War is Over," 
 and, likewise, "Who Will Care For Mother Xow?" 
 anthems that came at the end of the war. indica-
 
 206 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SOXGS. 
 
 tive of the impatience of both sides for the close of 
 the strife. There is also a "Tare well Forever to 
 the Star-Spangled Banner," which was to have 
 been supplanted "by thirteen bright stars around 
 the palmetto tree ;" "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and 
 "All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight," attri- 
 buted to Lamar Fontaine. 
 
 These are all entered for copyright in the 
 "District Court of the Confederate States of 
 America," and form an interesting relic of the 
 "lost cause."
 
 1 1 i:\UV CAKEY.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 great Britain's national anthem. 
 
 OXE of the most potent national anthems in. 
 existence is '"God Save the Queen." It 
 seems to be the product of no man and of no 
 time. Its words are few and simple, but there is 
 a power in them that not many national songs 
 possess. Its greatness is measured by its influence 
 upon forty millions of people, by the love of 
 country it inspires, and by its universal use among 
 the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. 
 
 As much ''history" has been written of "God 
 Save the Queen" as of '"Yankee Doodle," but 
 whether anyone has ever given the correct story of 
 the words and music is uncertain. The essential 
 question, "By whom were they written, and 
 when?" has never been satisfactorily answered. 
 It would seem to bo easier to trace the sources of 
 the Xile than to discover the true history of the
 
 208 STOKIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 British national anthem. One account says that 
 the music originated with John Bull, a noted 
 musician, organist to James I. in 1607, and after- 
 wards organist of the Cathedral of Antwerp, where 
 he died in 1628. In support of this theory it is 
 said that among the manuscript volumes of com- 
 positions, by Dr. Bull, was found an organ 
 voluntary identical in rhyme with "God Save 
 the King," and "bearing considerable resem- 
 blance to it in the form of its melody." In 
 an old Christmas Carol, printed at Aberdeen, 
 in 1682, are found phrases very much like the 
 present national anthem of Great Britain, and 
 therefore the claim is put forth that the music 
 has a Scottish origin. There is also a story that 
 the melody, and stanzas of similar construction to 
 "God Save the King," appeared in France, in 
 1686, during the reign of Louis XIV., and was 
 long associated with the vintages of old France. 
 The commonly accepted history of the words 
 and music is that they are the work of Henry 
 Carey, a poet and musician, who was born about 
 1685, and apparently died by his own hand in 
 1713. He wrote innumerable songs and witty 
 poems, and the production by which lie is best 
 known is "Sally in our Alley." But imputing to 
 him the authorship of either the words or melody
 
 GREAT BRITAIN S NATIONAL ANTHEM. 209 
 
 has provoked much controversy ; but nevertheless, 
 it is asserted by some historians that it was first 
 performed by Carey as his own composition 
 words and music at a public banquet in London, 
 in 1740. to celebrate the taking of Porto Bello, on 
 the Xorthern shore of the Isthmus of Panama, 
 by Admiral Vernon, November 20, 1739. The 
 anthem was first published about 1742 or 1743, 
 in the Harmonica Anglicana, and in the Gentle- 
 man's Magazine, in 1745. These are some of the 
 points set forth in the long and tiresome discussion 
 of the origin of the song, but no one has been able 
 to clearly establish the authenticity of anyone of 
 the claims. 
 
 In Moore's Cyclopedia of Music a work 
 edited with painstaking care is the following 
 brief story of the tune which has such a hold on the 
 world : 
 
 "It has been generally believed that Henry 
 Carey was the author, and that he employed Dr. 
 Thornton, of Bath, and Christopher Smith, 
 Handel's clerk, to correct the words as well as the 
 music. This gave rise to the assertion that 
 Handel was the composer. The words with the air 
 appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1745, 
 when the landing of young Stuart called forth 
 expressions of lovalty from the adherents of the
 
 210 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 reigning family. After Dr. Arne (composer of 
 the popular hymn tune 'Arlington/ and the song 
 'Rule Britannia') had brought it on the stage, it 
 soon became very popular. Since that time the 
 harmony of the song has been much improved, but 
 the rhythm is the same as originally. There is 
 a story that this national song was not made for 
 King George, but that in the older versions it ran 
 'God Save Great James, our King,' and that it was 
 originally written and set to music for the Catholic 
 chapel of James II., and no one durst own or sing 
 it after the abdication of James, fearing to incur 
 the penalty of treason, so that the song lay dormant 
 sixty years before it was revived for George II. 
 It is very interesting to observe how this song of 
 which the words have no great merit, has become 
 dear to the whole English nation, on account of the 
 associations connected with it." 
 
 William T. Stead, that great lay preacher of 
 political and social righteousness, and editor of 
 The London Review of Reviews, prints in his 
 valuable little book, "Hymns that have Helped," 
 a story of the origin of "God Save the Queen." 
 This much can be said in favor of the story it is 
 interesting, and may be as true to history as any- 
 thing that Richard Grant White, or anyone else, 
 has written on the anthem that has been the hope
 
 GREAT BRITAIN S NATIONAL ANTHEM. 211 
 
 and despair of many writers. Mr. Stead says: 
 "It is one of the ironies of history that the first 
 trace that can be discovered of the singing of the 
 English national anthem, imploring Divine help 
 for the reigning monarchy, was an occasion when 
 its petitions was most conspicuously refused. In 
 1688, when William of Orange was busy with his 
 preparations in aid of the conspiracy against the 
 Stuart dynasty, a Latin chorus was sung in the 
 private chapel of James II., which appears to have 
 been the origin of the famous anthem. But before 
 the year was out, it was King James who was sent 
 packing, and William of Orange reigned in his 
 stead. Then, as if to keep up the irony, the song 
 disappeared altogether until the Pretender in 
 1745 attempted, by the aid of his faithful Scots, to 
 regain the crown his ancestors lost. Then the 
 self-same musical prayer, first used, unavailing, on 
 behalf of James II., was revived in order to serve 
 as the Battle Hymn of the usurper who sat upon 
 his throne. Twelve days after the proclamation of 
 the Pretender in September, 1745, at Edinburgh, 
 'God Save the King' was sung with tremendous 
 enthusiasm at Drury Lane, and from that hour to 
 this it has held the first place among the national 
 an thorns of the world." 
 
 There is a wonderful attractiveness in the
 
 212 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 simple melody to which "God Save the Queen" is 
 sung. Beethoven introduced it in his "Battle 
 Symphony," and Weber has used it in three or 
 four of his compositions. It is a tune striking 
 enough to become international. It is popular in 
 France and Prussia, and Denmark and Sweden 
 have set it to national songs. It was also the state 
 melody of Russia for many years until the Czar 
 Nicholas, not being pleased with an imported air, 
 concluded that his people should sing a national 
 hymn from Russian heart and brain, and in 1833 
 Lwoff composed the tune of "God Preserve the 
 Czar," which, wedded to new words, is the best of 
 all the peculiar national anthems of that country. 
 The melody of "God Save the Queen," by an 
 accident more than otherwise, became indissolubly 
 linked to "My Country, 'tis of Thee." 
 
 The following is the form in which England's 
 national anthem has been sung since the beginning 
 of Victoria's reign : 
 
 God save our gracious Queen! 
 Long live our noble Queen! 
 
 God save the Queen! 
 Send her victorious, 
 Happy and glorious, 
 Long to reign over us, 
 
 God save the Queen!
 
 GREAT BRITAIN S NATIONAL ANTHEM. 213 
 
 O Lord, our God, arise. 
 Scatter her enemies, 
 
 And make them fall ! 
 Confound their politics, 
 Frustrate their knavish tricks, 
 On her our hopes we fix, 
 
 O, save us all ! 
 
 Thy choicest gifts in store 
 On her be pleased to pour, 
 
 Long may she reign! 
 May she defend our laws, 
 And ever give us cause, 
 To sing with heart and voice, 
 
 God save the Queen! 
 
 The song has found its way into some hymnals 
 in England, and possibly would have had a uni- 
 versal welcome in British hymn books had it not 
 been for the fourth and fifth lines in the second 
 stanza, which are not only rough and queer, but 
 intrinsically ridiculous. Many have wondered 
 why some first-class hymn-mender has not taken 
 the matter in hand and made a stanza equally as 
 fine and singable as the first and the last. But no 
 one has been inclined to disturb the sentiment of 
 a national anthem which has been such a power 
 for one hundred and fifty years. Mr. Stead says 
 that no part of this battle hymn of the British 
 monarchy is more genuine and hearty than the 
 stanza which offends many pious critics on account
 
 214 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 of the fidelity with which it reproduces the spirit 
 of the imprecatory Psalms of David. 
 
 The universality of the anthem is a prominent 
 feature of its history. When the Columbian Expo- 
 sition was being held in Chicago, in 1893, a num- 
 ber of representatives thereto, made up of twenty- 
 seven diverse nationalities, and speaking, when at 
 home, fifteen different languages, passed over the 
 Canadian frontier at Gretna, in Manitoba, on 
 August 29th, "for the purpose of heartily cheering 
 Queen Victoria, and singing 'God Save the 
 Queen.' ' There is no other national hymn in the 
 world that could have been sung so effectively 
 under similar circumstances. 
 
 Only a few years ago The Youth's Companion 
 gave an account of a dinner given a Harvard team 
 by an English team in England ; and the Harvards 
 were requested beforehand to sing "The Star 
 Spangled Banner," and their English hosts were 
 to respond with "God Save the Queen." But no 
 Harvard man, and none of their friends, knew 
 "The Star Spangled Banner." But when the Eng- 
 lish team sang the song of which every English- 
 man is proud, its sentiment was as heartfelt as the 
 volume of sound was majestic. 
 
 Better than anything I can say as to the spirit 
 and purpose of "God Save the Queen," are a few
 
 GREAT BRITAIN S NATIONAL ANTHEM. 215 
 
 words from Mr. Stead : "The singing of the na- 
 tional anthem, and the way it was sung in January, 
 1896, when England, left in 'splendid' but danger- 
 ous 'isolation,' was preparing for war against 
 envious rivals in Europe and America, did more 
 than anything else to impress the foreign observer 
 with the intensity and depth of the national emo- 
 tion. It was magnificent, almost awful, to hear 
 the swelling notes as they rose from great congre- 
 gations. For more than a hundred years, when- 
 ever the English people have been really stirred 
 by imminence of national danger, or by exultation 
 over national triumphs, the most satisfying expres- 
 sion for their inmost aspirations has been found in 
 the simple but vigorous verse. This is the war 
 song of the modern Englishman. For him it has 
 superseded all others, ancient or modern. 'Rule 
 Britannia' is not to be compared with it for univer- 
 sality of use, or for satisfying completeness of 
 verse and music. 
 
 "Whenever any number of Englishmen find 
 themselves fronting death, or whenever they have 
 experienced any great deliverance, whenever they 
 thrill with exultant pride, or nerve themselves to 
 offer an unyielding front to adverse fate, they have 
 used 'God Save the Queen,' or King, as it has been, 
 and will be again, as the natural national musical
 
 216 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 vehicle for expressing what would otherwise find 
 no utterance. It is the melody that is always 
 heard when our island story touches sublime 
 heights or sounds the profoundest depths. It is 
 one of the living links which bind into one the past, 
 the present, and future of the English race."
 
 ROT'GKT in: i.isi.i;
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE MARSEILLAISE. 
 
 FRAXCE has produced some of the most en- 
 trancing patriotic hymns the world has ever 
 heard. These lyrics have gone to the hearts 
 of the people and have seemed to speak to millions 
 as to one man. The French are a singing nation, 
 and they sing as they fight, and we are told that "to 
 the sound of songs monarchy fell to pieces in 
 France at the close of the eighteenth century." 
 
 "Carillon Xational" was a song revolutionary 
 in its spirit, and was the favorite air of Queen 
 Marie Antoinette. But she lived u to hear it sung 
 as a cry of rage and hatred against herself ; it pur- 
 sued her to the cell, and startled her on her way to 
 trial; and the beautiful, but ill-fated and mis- 
 guided queen, heard its harsh strains coining from 
 the vast multitude in inexpressible insolence as she
 
 218 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 lay her head under the guillotine." The supreme 
 tragedy of the French Revolution was inaugurated 
 with a song from the opera of "Richard Coeur de 
 Lion" Richard the Lion-Hearted the words 
 being applied to the despot, Louis XVI., and the 
 scenes which followed are among the bloodiest in 
 all modern history. 
 
 Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle was born at 
 Lons-le-Saulnier, France, in 1760. He became a 
 captain of engineers, and was stationed at Stras- 
 burg in 1792. War had been declared against the 
 Austrians, and the fate of France seemed to 
 tremble as if in a balance. The mayor of Stras- 
 burg became acquainted with De Lisle, and on the 
 24th of April, 1792, he invited the young engineer 
 to dine with him, and knowing that he had a turn 
 for music and poetry, asked him to write a martial 
 song to be sung on the departure of six hundred 
 volunteers who had been called to join the army 
 of the Rhine, and which would also rouse a higher 
 spirit of patriotism among the people of the city, 
 that Strasburg might be the better able to resist 
 an attack by the Austrians. Excited by the dinner 
 and complimented by the invitation, De Lisle, who 
 was intensely fiery and emotional, produced, be- 
 fore daylight the following morning, what Ulbach 
 calls "the eternal poem of the great apogee of the
 
 THE MARSEILLAISE. 219 
 
 Revolution." There was an unconscious conjunc- 
 tion of the hour and the man, and in an outburst 
 of patriotic frenzy the immortal national song of 
 France was born : 
 
 Ye sons of freemen, awake to glory, 
 
 Hark, hark what myriads bid you rise, 
 Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary, 
 
 Behold their tears and hear their cries! 
 Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding, 
 
 With hireling hosts, a ruffian band, 
 Affright and desolate the land, 
 
 While peace and liberty lie bleeding? 
 To arms ! To arms, ye brave ! 
 
 Th' avenging sword unsheath! 
 March on, march on, all hearts resolved 
 On liberty or death. 
 
 Now, now the dangerous storm is scowling 
 
 Which treacherous kings, confederate, raise; 
 The dogs of war, let loose, are howling, 
 
 And, lo ! our fields and cities blaze. 
 And shall we basely view the ruin, 
 
 While lawless force, with guilty stride, 
 Spreads desolation far and wide, 
 
 With crimes and blood his hands embruing? 
 
 With luxury and pride surrounded, 
 
 The vile, insatiate despots dare, 
 Their thirst of power and gold unbounded, 
 
 To mete and vend the light and air: 
 Like beasts of burden would they load us, 
 
 Like gods would bid their slaves adore; 
 But man is man, and who is more? 
 
 Then, shall they longer lash and goad us?
 
 220 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Liberty! can man resign thee! 
 
 Once having felt thy gen'rous flame? 
 Can dungeon, bolts, and bars confine thee, 
 
 Or whips thy noble spirit tame? 
 Too long the world has wept, bewailing 
 
 That falsehood's dagger tyrants wield; 
 But freedom is our sword and shield, 
 
 And all their arts are unavailing. 
 
 When it was sung in the public square the next 
 day it excited so much enthusiasm that nine hun- 
 dred, instead of six hundred, volunteers joined the 
 army for the Rhine. The song of the "Marseil- 
 laise" was startling. "It was the fire-water of the 
 French Revolution," and evoked fierce passions 
 and terrible deeds. The inflaming accents of the 
 song drove men to crimes more desperate than we 
 can comprehend to-day. In "The Story of a Musi- 
 cal Life," Dr. George F. Root says that when he 
 was in Paris, on the Fourth of July, 1851, he and 
 five other Americans thought they would celebrate 
 the day. They had a big dinner, and speeches, and 
 songs. They sang "The Star Spangled Banner," 
 and "America ;" and finally they agreed to com- 
 pliment the French, and Dr. Root began the "Mar- 
 seillaise," "Ye sons of freedom, wake to glory;" 
 but he had not gone far, when the lady of the house 
 rushed into the room, frantic in speech and wild 
 in demonstration, commanding them to stop the
 
 THE MAKSEILEAISE. 221 
 
 "Marseillaise," for a crowd was collecting, and her 
 house would be in ruins. And, sure enough, the 
 song had been heard upon the street, and a vast 
 throng was preparing to charge upon the rooms 
 from which had come the blood-stirring words and 
 tune. An old soldier, who served under the First 
 Xapoleon, boarding at the same place, went down 
 to the street and explained the good intentions of 
 the innocent Americans, and after much persua- 
 sion the crowd dispersed. The "Marseillaise" had 
 been interdicted for many years by the French 
 government because of fear respecting its effect 
 upon the passions of that inflammable people. 
 
 In 1830, Ileinrich Heine, the most prominent 
 figure in German literature since Goethe and 
 Schiller, wrote of the "Marseillaise :" "What a 
 song ! It thrills me with fiery delight, it kindles 
 within me the glowing star of enthusiasm and the 
 swift rocket of desire. Swelling, burning torrents 
 of song rush from the heights of freedom in 
 streams as bold as those with which the Ganges 
 leap from the heights of the Himalaya! I can 
 write no more, this song intoxicates my brain ; 
 louder and nearer advances the powerful chorus: 
 
 'To arms! To arms, ye bravo!'" 
 Rouget de Lisle named the sono- "The War
 
 2 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Song of the Army of the Rhine." But in a few 
 months it found its way to Marseilles, and to other 
 cities in Trance, and was extensively used by en- 
 thusiastic revolutionists. On the 30th of July, 
 1792, it was first sung in Paris by a horde of 
 ruffians from Marseilles "five hundred strong, 
 the vilest and most brutal of the floating popula- 
 tion of a Mediterranean sea-port town, who were 
 summoned to Paris for the purpose of exciting and 
 assisting at the atrocities of 1792." The Parisians 
 called it "the song of the Marseilles," and as such 
 it became the official hymn of the republicans of 
 France. 
 
 The extraordinary character of the air has 
 given it a more eventful career than any other song 
 that ever was born of a call to battle. It has been 
 "the signal of destruction, the warning note of 
 revolution." When the song was only seven 
 months old ISTovember, 1792 the republicans of 
 France, under Dumouriez, fought the Austrians 
 at Jemappes, in Belgium. At the most perilous 
 hour in that great battle, Dumouriez, finding that 
 his right wing was almost without officers, and 
 giving way before the fire of the Austrian infan- 
 try, put himself at the head of his army, and began 
 to sing the "Marseillaise" hymn. The soldiers 
 joined in the song, their courage was redoubled,
 
 THE MARSEILLAISE. 223 
 
 they charged the enemy, and the victory placed 
 Belgium in the power of France. 
 
 "During the Crimean war before Sebastopol, 
 a body of French troops were detached to storm 
 the Malakoff. The line was formed and at the 
 signal they moved to the charge. The Russians 
 met them and hurled them back. Again they re- 
 formed and rushed with impetuous daring upon 
 the foe, and again were repulsed. Seven times 
 they advanced, and seven times the thinned and 
 enfeebled ranks were driven before the Russians. 
 They rallied the eighth time and called for the 
 'Marseillaise.' But the soldiers refused to move 
 until the music sounded. The inspiring strains 
 rose over the frightful carnage of the bloody field ; 
 the men shouted for the onset, and madly rushed 
 through blazing showers of shot and shell. Whole 
 ranks were mowed down ; their places were filled 
 from the rear, and louder than the storm of battle, 
 above the wild outcry, 'March on ! March on !' 
 rang the triumphant and immortal song of France. 
 The men leaped the trenches, and inspirited by the 
 song which dispelled all fear, and inspired the 
 climax of courage, they plunged into the furnace 
 of fire and death, drove the Cossocks from their 
 guns, and the Malakoff" was won." 
 
 When Roiuret de Lisle wrote the "Marseil-
 
 224 STOKIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 laise," he little thought to what base use it would 
 be put, or what would be his own fate. He was 
 as loyal as any man in France, but being suspected 
 of being disloyal, he was imprisoned during the 
 Reign of Terror in Paris, and heard his song above 
 the roar of battle in the storming of the Tuileries 
 on the 10th of August, 1792 ; but when Robes- 
 pierre fell, De Lisle was released. He would have 
 gone to the guillotine with the "Marseillaise" ring- 
 ing in his ears, had not a happy circumstance set 
 him free before his fatal turn came. Soon after 
 Rouget de Lisle was proscribed as a Royalist, he 
 fled from France and took refuge in the Alps. 
 And Richard Grant White says "the echoes of the 
 chord that he so unwittingly had struck, pursued 
 him even to the mountain tops of Switzerland." 
 "What," he said to a peasant guide, "is this the 
 song I hear 
 
 'Ye sons of France, awake to glory?' " 
 
 And it was upon the wilds of the mountains, 
 whither he had been driven by a frenzy which he 
 had innocently incited, that he first learned that 
 his "War Song of the Rhine" had become the song 
 of the Marseilles. 
 
 Rouget de Lisle was wounded, with many other 
 Royalists, at Quiberon, in France, in 1795, and
 
 THE MARSEILLAISE. 225 
 
 after quitting the army he was reduced to sordid 
 poverty for many years ; and it was not until 1830, 
 six years before his death, that Louis Philippe 
 granted him a pension.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 BATTLE HYMNS OF GERMANY. 
 
 AVAST array of illustrations of battle songs 
 in history is found in Germany. In the 
 story of war lyrics of that country we meet 
 with "flashing, sword-cut songs and fierce epics 
 which read like the rush of a torrent of blood amid 
 the groans of the dying, formulating battle hymns 
 no less dominant than they were among the Norse- 
 men who lived to sing and sang to die." From 
 the fifteenth century to the present day, the songs 
 of Germany have risen with almost every gener- 
 ation in fresh swarms. If we take a retrospect of 
 German life, we will find the people of that 
 country, most prone, perhaps of all modern races, 
 to outbursts of feeling in song. A Spaniard or a 
 Frenchman sings as if he could not help it; a 
 German sings as though he would not help it if 
 he could. This accounts for the earnest spirit
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 C^a3i 
 
 
 
 
 
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 max sen \ i :cki:.\ i : r u< ; i : i:
 
 BATTLE HYMNS OF GEKMANY. 227 
 
 of so many of their songs of the Reformation, 
 and the cultured and well-balanced form or even 
 their rudest soldier songs. The consequence 
 has been that the German-folk, not being ashamed 
 of poetic expressions of their feelings, have done 
 all honor to their poets, and have sung their war 
 songs enthusiastically and in triumphant tones. 
 The agonies of Germany in the Thirty Years' war 
 and other conflicts, produced up to the end of the 
 seventeenth century 32,700 patriotic and Christian 
 songs. Such an unburdening of the emotions of 
 the heart and of the conflict of the soul in song can 
 scarcely find a parallel in the history of any other 
 race of people. 
 
 Germany has produced some war ballads which 
 roused the masses to the highest pitch of excite- 
 pient. In the uprising of the German nation in 
 1813, Theodor Korner, born in 1791, encouraged 
 his comrades in the army by writing fiery, 
 patriotic songs. He was an enthusiastic patriot, 
 and the night before the battle near Kosenburg, 
 which was fought on the 26th of August, 1813, 
 and in which he was killed, he wrote his famous 
 "Sword Song," which for some time was regarded 
 as the "Marseillaise" of the German people. 
 
 One of Germany's most powerful battle songs 
 came from the heart of Ernst Moritz Arndt. who
 
 228 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 was born in 1769, and died in 1860. The year 
 1813 is memorable in the history of Germany's 
 struggle for liberty. The country had been in- 
 volved in the war by Napoleon, and when his Rus- 
 sian campaign had resulted disastrously, the rem- 
 nant of his once great army, famished and frozen, 
 "wandered like ghosts across the snowfields of Ger- 
 many looking for shelter." 
 
 During those trying times, faithful preachers 
 of the gospel of political liberty traveled over Ger- 
 many, gave the people patriotic songs to sing, en- 
 couraging them to trust in God, and to have con- 
 fidence in a free and united Germany. 
 
 When Xapoleon had fled from Russia, making 
 his way to Paris, two men could be seen in a sleigh 
 hurrying toward the Russian frontier with a mes- 
 sage of hope to patriotic Germans in the field. 
 They were Baron Stein, the noted constitutional 
 authority, and the poet Arndt, whose songs became 
 as powerful as the sword. It was during this win- 
 ter's ride that Stein, after having been long 
 absorbed in thought, exclaimed: "The Prussian 
 congress must be convened; the volunteers must 
 be called out Austria, Saxony, Westphalia, Ba- 
 varia, Wurtemberg, Tryol and so the rest of Ger- 
 many must follow in the wake." 
 
 Arndt, also, was equal to the occasion, and
 
 BATTLE HYMNS OF GERMANY. 229 
 
 shouted in response: "Das Ganze Deutschland 
 soil es sein My country must be all Germany. 
 You have the constitution, but I have the song of 
 German liberty." And that enthusiasm gave birth 
 to the magnificent song which did so much to in- 
 spire the army with courage and to win the battle 
 that made Germany free and united. "What is 
 the German Fatherland ?" is the leading line in 
 each stanza. "Is it Prussia, is it Saxony, is it 
 Bavaria !" and so on, to which each stanza answers 
 "Xo, no, no." Poultney Bigelow, in Harper's 
 Magazine, says that "Arndt, following the logic of 
 Stein, on that frosty sleigh ride amid the wreck 
 of Xapoleonic armies, ends his song with the im- 
 mortal words 'Das Ganze Deutschland soil es 
 sein My country must be all Germany.' ' The 
 power of that song in the mighty struggle of Ger- 
 many for liberty in 1813, can never be fully 
 measured. 
 
 Stirring times in Germany gave birth to a 
 "Rhine Song," written byXicolaus Becker in 1840. 
 In the sense of being a well-constructed lyric, it was 
 not as great as others which preceded it, but hap- 
 pily and rhythmically, it expressed the fixed deter- 
 mination of the German heart to hold the Rhine 
 against the power of France, and its effect was
 
 230 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 something marvelous. It is claimed that it was 
 set to music by seventy different composers. 
 
 The chief patriotic song of Germany is "Watch 
 on the Khine," but the national hymn which 
 "thrills the whole German empire is "Heil Dir im 
 Siegerkranz" "Hail to Thee in the Conqueror's 
 Wreath." It was written in 1790 as a song for the 
 birthday of Christian VII. of Denmark, by Hein- 
 rich Harries. When it passed into Berlin in 1793, 
 it was recast into its present form by Balthasar 
 Gerhard Schumacher, and sung to the tune to 
 which we sing "My Country, 'tis of Thee," and 
 from which it has never been separated. This na- 
 tional hymn has such a strong hold on German 
 affect ion that the centenary of its publication was 
 celebrated with demonstration and enthusiasm 
 throughout the Empire in December, 1893. 
 
 It would seem that Germany, in her struggle 
 with France, had little need of more patriotic 
 songs. She had already a dozen living, moving, 
 exciting battle hymns. But every new phase of 
 every conflict which fired the German heart pro- 
 duced a new song. It was in 1810 that Max 
 Sclmeekenburger, then twenty-one years old, wrote 
 his potent and wonderful "Watch on the Ehine." 
 He was not a poet, but a hustling, every-day busi- 
 ness man ; but from his soul, as from a flint, leaped
 
 BATTLE HYMNS OF GERAlANY. 231 
 
 the spark which made Germany one flame of 
 patriotism. When he saw the left bank of the 
 Rhine threatened by France, his heart was more 
 than ever warmed with a love of home and coun- 
 try, and in a moment of great emotion he sang, as 
 one translation gives it : 
 
 "The Rhine is safe while German hands, 
 Can draw and wield the battle-brands, 
 While strength to point a gun remains, 
 Or life-blood runs in German veins." 
 
 There are many English translations of the 
 "Watch on the Rhine," but the one which has been 
 most highly commended is found in Warner's 
 Library of the World's Best Literature, and is as 
 follows : 
 
 A voice resounds like thunder peal, 
 'Mid dashing wave and clang of steel ; 
 "The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine ! 
 Who guards to-day my stream divine? - ' 
 
 Dear Fatherland! no danger thine, 
 
 Dear Fatherland! no danger thine; 
 
 Firm stand thy sons to watch, to watch the Rhine, 
 
 Firm stand thy sons to watch, to watch the Rhine. 
 
 They stand a hundred thousand strong, 
 Quick to avenge their country's wrong; 
 With filial love their bosoms swell: 
 They'll guard the sacred landmark well.
 
 232 STORIES OF GKEAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 While flows one drop of German blood, 
 Or sword remains to guard thy flood, 
 While rifle rests in patriot's hand, 
 No foe shall tread thy sacred strand! 
 
 Our oath resounds, the river flows, 
 
 In golden light our banner glows, 
 
 Our hearts will guard thy stream divine, 
 
 The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine! 
 
 The power of this song was so great that it was 
 afterwards seized by four eminent composers F. 
 Mendel of Berne, in 1840; Leopold Schroter of 
 Warlitz, in 1852 ; F. W. Sering of Strasburg, in 
 1852 ; and last, and greatest of all, Carl Wilhelm of 
 Schmalkalden. The words of "Watch on the 
 Rhine" were first sung to Wilhelm's melody on 
 the 11th of June, 1854. Schneckenburger died in 
 1849, long before his song became famous, as it 
 did not attain widespread popularity until the 
 breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war. It then 
 became the song of the mightiest army of modern 
 Europe, and, in fact, the pean of all Germany; 
 and nothing could resist the song of the Rhine in 
 the defense of that country against the attacks of 
 France. 
 
 Emperor William, recognizing the influence of 
 the melody of "Watch on the Rhine'' on the Ger- 
 man army, gave Wilhelm a pension of $750 a year,
 
 BATTLE HYMNS OF GERMANY. 233 
 
 and when he died, two years later, his native city 
 erected a handsome monument to his memory. 
 
 It has been said that every important turn in 
 the fortunes of war in Germany "the repulse of 
 Wallenstein from Stralsund, the frightful devasta- 
 tion of Magdeburg, the battle of Liitzen, the death 
 of Gustavus Adolphus each memorable action, 
 whether advance or retreat, has been recorded in 
 song." But it was not until the beginning of the 
 present century, when the great struggle began for 
 the union of all that was "home-born and 
 Teutonic," that Germany's battle songs became 
 "truly splendid." It was indeed in the lyrics of 
 Korner, Arndt, Becker and Schneckenburger that 
 German patriotism reached its culmination. 
 These were true poets of the soul, and, to borrow 
 a sentence from Amelia E. Barr, "their products 
 have become part and parcel of that rich inherit- 
 ance of song that so nobly interprets the intense 
 love of freedom and unaffected simplicity of the 
 German character."
 
 GENEKAL INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Anacreon in Heaven, 48, 49. 
 
 America, origin of, 56 ; Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes on, 58 ; 
 words of, 60 ; Edward Ever- 
 ett Hale on, 61 ; New York 
 Sun on, 62 ; Kansas City 
 Star on, 65 ; the Pope's re- 
 quest for copy of, 65. 
 
 a Becket, Thomas, 73, 74. 
 
 Andrew, John A., 86, 113. 
 
 Antoinette, Marie, 217. 
 
 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 227, 
 228 ; his great war song, 
 229, 233. 
 
 B. 
 
 Billings, William, 33 ; his bat- 
 tle hymn, 35 ; Hezekiah 
 Butterworth on, 37. 
 
 Beanes, Dr., 45. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 53. 
 
 Brownell, Henry Howard, 82. 
 
 Battle Cry of Freedom, story 
 of, 93 ; words of, 95, 96 ; 
 first singing of, 96 ; sung in 
 the Wilderness, 97 ; 103, 
 104, 105, 106. 
 
 Belfield, Dr. H. H, relates an 
 incident, 98. 
 
 Browne, Richard W., on sing- 
 ing army songs, 100. 
 
 Battle Hymn of the Republic, 
 82 ; story of, 108 ; words of, 
 111, 112 ; 114, 117, 119. 
 
 Biancolelli, 164. 
 
 Bok, Edward W., writes of 
 Dixie, 180. 
 
 Bonnie Blue Flag, 201 ; how 
 written, 202 ; words of, 203. 
 
 Battle Hymns of Germany, 
 226. 
 
 Becker, Nicolaus, his Rhine 
 song, 230, 233. 
 
 Barr, Amelia E., 233. 
 
 C. 
 Charles I., 16, 25. 
 Cromwell, 24, 25. 
 Cornwallis, Lord, 29. 
 Carey, Henry, 61, 208, 209. 
 Columbia, the Gem of the 
 
 Ocean, 72 ; words of, 75, 76. 
 Chandler, Lieut., incident on 
 
 John Brown's body, 85. 
 Curtis, W. E., 109. 
 Collyer, Robert, 111. 
 Choate, Joseph H, 124. 
 Crosby, Fanny J., 189. 
 Confederate Music, 205. 
 Carillon National, 217.
 
 GEMERAL INDEX. 
 
 23S 
 
 D. 
 
 Daghela avanti un Passo, 13, 
 14. 
 
 Dawson, Nancy, air of, 24. 
 
 Dewey, Admiral, 95. 
 
 Dana, Charles A., on the influ- 
 ence of Root's music, 103. 
 
 Dixie, story of, 178 ; words of, 
 182, 183 ; how taken to bat- 
 tlefields, 184 ; other words 
 to Dixie, 188 ; meaning of, 
 191 ; influence of the air, 
 192. 
 
 E. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 87. 
 
 Emmett, Daniel D., 180 ; how 
 he wrote Dixie, 181. 
 
 Fletcher, Andrew, 9. 
 Finck, Henry T., 11. 
 Fitz-Gerald, S. J. Adair, 39, 
 
 Hood's Song of the Shirt, 15. 
 
 Howe, Julia Ward, 20, 111, 
 113, 162. 
 
 Hastings, Jonathan, 26. 
 
 Hail Columbia, origin of, 39 ; 
 its influence, 42. 
 
 Hopkinson, Joseph, 41. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 58. 
 
 Hall, Charles S., 80. 
 
 Habberton, John, on John 
 Brown's Body, 90. 
 
 Hall, Florence Howe, 112, 
 117, 119. 
 
 Halstead. Mnrat, 118. 
 
 Home, Sweet Home, on the 
 banjo, 18 ; 164 ; words of, 
 166 ; interesting army inci- 
 dent, 175. 
 
 Harries, Heinrich, 230. 
 
 I. 
 
 Ingersoll, Robert G., 10. 
 
 Fort Mellenry, 45, 49 ; flag of, 
 49. 
 
 Fort Sumter, raising the flag 
 at, 53. 
 
 Fields, James T., names the 
 Battle Hymn of the Repub- 
 lic, 114. 
 
 Field, Dr. Henry M., 131. 
 
 G. 
 
 Grisi, Giulia, 12. 13. 
 
 Grove's Dictionary of Music, 
 13. 
 
 Greenleaf, J. E., 81. 
 
 Gibbous, John S., 122, 124 ; 
 how he wrote Father Abra- 
 ham, 125 ; death of, 120. 
 
 Gilmore. Patrick S., 15S, 159. 
 
 Great Britain's National An- 
 them, 207 ; its singular his- 
 tory, 208, 209 ; words of, 
 212, 213. 
 
 John Brown's Body, the story 
 of, 77 : words of, 81 ; Rich- 
 ard Henry Dana, Jr., on, 
 78 ; Sherman's Army sings, 
 91. 
 
 Just Before the Battle, 
 Mother, 129. 
 
 Jemappes, battle of, 222. 
 
 K. 
 
 Key, Francis Scott, 45, 49. 
 Keene, Thomas W., 52. 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 114. 
 Kingdom Coming, 137. 
 Kittredge, Walter, 154, 155, 
 
 162. 
 Korner, Theodor, 227, 233. 
 
 L. 
 Lind, Jenny. 12. 13. 170. 
 Lossing. Benson J., 24. 
 Lick, James, 50.
 
 236 
 
 STORIES OF GREAT NATIONAL SONGS. 
 
 Lumbard, Jules and Frank, 
 
 96, 106. 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 94, 95, 
 
 121, 126, 179. 
 Lowell, James Russell, 115, 
 
 193. 
 
 M. 
 
 Music, utility of, 11. 
 
 Musical Age, The, 18. 
 
 My Country, 'tis of Thee, 56 ; 
 
 sung in foreign lands, 63. 
 Mozart, 57. 
 Mason, Lowell, 59. 
 Marshall, Edward, 70. 
 McKinley, President, 95, 144. 
 Matthews, Brander, 56, 81, 
 
 88, 102, 124, 126, 194, 201. 
 Mills, Luther Lafiin, 106. 
 My Grandfather's Clock, 147. 
 Marching Through Georgia, 
 
 136 ; words of, 138 ; Root's 
 
 opinion of, 139; 140, 141, 
 
 143, 144. 
 Mason and Dixon"s Line, 190. 
 Maryland, My Maryland, 176 ; 
 
 its authorship, 193 ; words 
 
 of, 196, 197 ; when first 
 
 sung, 198 ; the song at 
 
 Manassas, 198. 
 Marseillaise, The, 217 ; words 
 
 of, 219, 220; sung by Dr. 
 
 Root, 220 ; great influence 
 
 of, 222, 223. 
 Malakoff, storming of the, 
 
 223. 
 
 Napoleon's Old Guard, 16. 
 
 National Song, prize offered 
 for, 110. 
 
 O. 
 
 Outlook, The, on singing na- 
 tional songs, 68. 
 
 Old Shady, its story, 149 ; 
 words of, 150. 
 
 Porto Rico incident, 18. 
 
 Proctor, Edna D., John 
 Brown words, 83. 
 
 Preble, Rear Admiral, 73. 
 
 Piatt, Thomas, C, 116. 
 
 Payne, John Howard, 165 ; 
 how he wrote Home, Sweet 
 Home, 165 ; goes to Tunis, 
 169 ; his troubles, 169 ; a 
 brilliant scene, 170 ; Jenny 
 Lind sings his song, 170 ; 
 out of office, 170 ; re-ap- 
 pointed, 171 ; his re-inter- 
 ment, at Washington, 172. 
 
 Pike, Albert, writes words to 
 Dixie, 185. 
 
 R. 
 
 Ross, Alexander C, 17. 
 
 Ritter, Dr. Frederic, on music 
 in the Revolution, 35, 36. 
 
 Root, George F., 95 : his Story 
 of a Musical Life, 96 ; he 
 relates a pathetic story, 
 104 ; the influence of hi 
 songs, 105 ; the Coliseum 
 war song festival. 106 ; 
 Luther Lafiin Mills on th 
 power of Root's war songs, 
 106; 127, 129, 135, 137, 
 144, 162. 
 
 Rayne, M. L., on Dixie, 189. 
 
 Randall, James Ryder, 193 ; 
 how he wrote My Maryland, 
 194 ; a personal tribute, 
 199, 201. 
 
 Rouget de Lisle, 218, 223, 224. 
 
 S. 
 
 Shackburg, Dr., 28. 
 
 Star Spangled Banner, origin 
 of, 44 ; words of, 46, 47 ; 
 sung at Metropolitan Opera 
 House, 54 ; at Santiago, 55. 
 
 Smith, John Strafford, 48.
 
 GENEKAL INDEX. 
 
 237 
 
 Song writers, their master- 
 pieces, 57. 
 
 Smith, Samuel F., 60 ; at Chi- 
 cago Board of Trade, 64 ; 
 111. 
 
 Shaw, David T., 72. 
 
 Sherman, John, a good story 
 on, 109. 
 
 Steffe, William, composer of 
 John Brown air, 84. 
 
 Schley, Admiral, 90, 95. 
 
 Sherman, General, opinion of 
 Marching Through Georgia, 
 141 ; relates an amusing in- 
 cident, 141 ; writes of Old 
 Shady, 150. 
 
 Song of a Thousand Years, 
 144, 145. 
 
 Songs of Cheer and Pathos, 
 157. 
 
 Sawyer, Charles C, 159, 161 ; 
 the popularity of his songs, 
 161. 
 
 Songs of the South, 178. 
 
 Stead, William T., writes of 
 God Save the Queen, 210, 
 215. 
 
 Schneckenburger, Max, 231, 
 233. 
 
 T. 
 
 Tippecanoe and Tyler Too, 17. 
 
 Thurston, John M., 117, 118. 
 
 Thurston, Mrs. John M., 117, 
 118. 
 
 Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, 127, 
 128 ; the Charleston scene, 
 127. 
 
 The Vacant Chair, 132 ; how 
 written, 133 ; words of, 134. 
 
 Tenting on the Old Camp 
 Ground, 153 ; its influence, 
 154 ; how written, 155. 
 
 W. 
 
 Willard, Frances E., 18. 
 
 Watterson, Henry, his tribute 
 to Star Spangled Banner, 
 50. 
 
 Woodbridge, W. C, 59. 
 
 Watkins, Captain, 67. 
 
 Webster, Fletcher, 80 ; his 
 regiment sings John Brown, 
 87 ; death of, 87. 
 
 We Are Coming, Father Abra- 
 ham, origin of, 121 ; words 
 of, 122, 123. 
 
 Work, Alanson, 136. 
 
 Work, Henry C, 137 ; his war 
 songs, 143, 144, 145 ; his 
 misfortunes, 146 ; writes 
 My Grandfather's Clock, 
 147 ; his death, 147 ; 162. 
 
 When Johnny Comes March- 
 ing Home, 157. 
 
 When this Cruel War is Over, 
 159. 
 
 Who Will Care for Mother 
 Now, 160, 161. 
 
 Watch on the Rhine, 230, 
 231 ; words of, 232. 
 
 Wilhelm, Carl, 232. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yankee Doodle, story of, 23, 
 24 ; New York Sun on, 26 ; 
 Duyckinck Cyclopaedia on, 
 26 ; words of, 30. 
 
 Yankee, definition of, 25.
 
 
 f t 

 
 A A 000 084 238 5 
 
 A