Music, Music
from The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts by Burke Davis
At the height of the battle of Shiloh, when the issue was much in doubt, a Federal band blared away at tunes from Il Trovatore, as thousands of blue-clad soldiers huddled under the river bluffs, and their comrades held off the Confederates.
Not long afterward, as the furious first day's fighting dragged to an end, a fresh regiment came ashore from its boats, with a band playing "Hail Columbia.' Some officers thought it helped to save the day for the Union.
Robert E. Lee once listened to a band concert in camp and said, "I don't see how we could have an army without music."
Both armies applied music to problems of morale.
Federal armies in the first days of the war had half their regiments equipped with bands. Musicians drew higher pay than privates, and hats were passed for them after concerts; this attracted many famous civilian bands. Most Union bands were of 22 pieces, and they overcame Confederate competition in many engagements. Southern troops gathered eagerly to listen to music from enemy bands, throughout the war.
Fifty Union bands staged a Sunday concert at the White House before the Seven Days battles in 1862, but served only to arm critics in the North and reduce the blare of martial music. It was charged that the War Department spent $4,000,000 a year on bands, and that in July, 1862, there were 618 bands in service, a ratio of one musician to every 42 soldiers. The protests ended regimental bands, and thereafter only brigades had official bands--of 16 men each. Best of them were the German bands, thoroughly trained in civilian life.
Most Confederate bands had but three or four pieces, usually played by Germans, and though they got no such handsome treatment as Federal musicians, the Southerners adapted themselves readily. Bandsmen learned to serenade the most prosperous-looking houses in a neighborhood, in return for food. The piano player would walk uninvited into the house, play at the instrument until the family gathered, and charm the hosts as his comrades joined him singly. Such concerts invariably produced rations.
Federal cavalry officers, especially Philip Sheridan, used bands to inspire headlong charges of his men. Among the Confederate troopers, however, only the famed 2nd Virginia regiment had a band, which came into being by the capture of the instruments of a New York infantry regiment at Haymarket, Virginia.
The 17th Virginia Infantry had Irish music from its fife-and-drum team, composed of a father and his son, the latter so small that his coattails dragged the ground behind, and his drum bumped in front.
A German, Jacob Gans, was the favorite bugler of the Confederate General, Nathan B. Forrest; he was so often under fire as to qualify as a combatant. On one march to Pulaski, Mississippi, riding close to his commander, Gans got three bullet holes in his bugle.
Another German, Jacob Tannenbaum, who had been a court musician in Hanover at 19, was caught in Mississippi at the outbreak of war. In Mobile, Alabama, he teamed with Harry McCarthy to write "The Bonnie Blue Flag," according to one story, but soon migrated to the North and joined a minstrel troupe.
One Major Naquet, an engineer on the staff of the Confederate General, Braxton Bragg, endeared himself to troops by singing in camp, especially a spirited rendition of the "Marseillaise"--but on the eve of the battle of Missionary Ridge he absconded with $150,000 from the army's war chest, deserted to the enemy and told all he knew of Bragg's position.
Late in the war Confederate troops were still being cheered by bands, despite all handicaps. When General Jubal A. Early moved into the outskirts of Washington in 1864, one of the first reports of danger came from a scout, to this effect:
"The enemy are preparing to make a grand assault on Fort Stevens tonight. They are tearing down fences and are moving to the right, their bands playing. Can't you hurry up the Fifth Corps?"
The bands of the 11th and 26th North Carolina (the latter regiment almost destroyed in the engagement) played so loudly during the 2nd day's fighting at Gettysburg as to draw fire from Federal artillery. These men were called from their duty of nursing the wounded to bolster the morale of the infantry, and played for hours in competition with the massed fire of guns on both sides.
One of the war's lively musical traditions was created by J.E.B. Stuart, the cavalry chief of the Army of Northern Virginia. He fashioned a sort of primitive jazz band around a servant, "Mulatto Bob," who played the bones; Sam Sweeney of Appomattox, Virginia, a banjoist; half a dozen fiddlers, singers and dancers. Stuart kept some of them busy through most of the war; battle was a temporary interruption.
Sweeney was one of the early blackface minstrels. His brother, Joe, who died just before the war, was credited with development of the banjo from a crude instrument used by Negroes on Southern plantations. The Sweeney company had become so famous as to stage a European tour, and once played for Queen Victoria.
Stuart was an enthusiastic serenader, and at 1 a.m. of October 9, 1862, just as he was taking his horsemen on one of his famed raids into Pennsylvania, he paused for a musical interlude.
With banjo, bones, fiddlers and chorus, Stuart roused the bevy of young ladies at The Bower, the home of Stephen Dandridge, near Martinsburg, Virginia. While his audience smiled down, the commander of cavalry directed this program--all within sound of his troops:
Grand Overture - Orchestra
Cottage by the Sea - Sweeney
Lilly Dear - Sweeney
When the Swallows Homeward Fly - Stuart
Looka Dar Now - Capt. Tiernan Brien
Going Down to Town - Sweeney
Ever of Thee - Sweeney
Money Musk - Orchestra
The Separation - Stuart
I Ain't Got No Time To Tarry (Sic! sic! sic!) - Sweeney
Evelyn - Stuart
Lively Price - Orchestra
Soldier's Dream - Stuart
Old Grey Mare - Sweeney
Of the many songs originated in the war, at least one became a well-known hymn--"Hold the Fort, For I Am Coming." It was born in an incident of the fighting around Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, when the Confederates isolated General J.M. Corse with his 1,500 men in Allatoona.
When a division of 6,500 Southerners attacked the outpost, and all seemed lost for the bluecoats, signalmen flapping their flags on Kennesaw Mountain sent Corse the messages: "Sherman is moving with force. Hold out." And: "Hold on, General Sherman says he is working hard for you."
Corse did hold out, despite 705 casualties and 200 lost as prisoners. Near the end, when Sherman sent a message asking if Corse had been wounded, the defiant reply went back: "I am short a cheekbone and one ear, but am able to whip all hell yet."
Of these materials Philip Paul Bliss wrote his popular hymn.
Perhaps the best-known of all Civil War music is the bugle call, "Taps," which began as a call for troops of the Federal General Daniel Butterfield.
Music was often a peacemaker of sorts. In the fighting before the fall of Atlanta, the brass band of Major Arthur Shoaff's battallion of Georgia Sharpshooters gave to the cause their expert cornettist. Each evening after supper, the musician came to the front lines and played for Confederates along the entrenchments. When firing was heavy, he failed to appear.
Across the lines, Federal pickets would shout, "Hey, Johnny! We want that cornet player."
"He would play, but he's afraid you'll spoil his horn."
"We'll hold fire."
"All right, Yanks."
The cornettist would then mount the works and play solos from operas, and sing tunes like "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming," and "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls" in a fine tenor.
Colonel James Cooper Nisbet, who was on hand, never forgot the scene: "How the Yanks would applaud! They had a good cornet player who would alternate with our man."
The concert over, firing would begin.
