The Confederate National Anthem

   As far as we can tell, the Confederate government never adopted a National Anthem. That might seem odd, but the “Star Spangled Banner” was not adopted as the national anthem by the United States Congress until 1931. (The words were penned by Francis Scott Key in September 1814, while watching the attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore).

   Many people today probably believe that “Dixie’s Land" was the official Confederate national anthem. It does not appear that it was ever even considered. “Dixie’s Land” was composed in New York City by Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmitt. Dan Emmitt was a performer in the Black-face Bryant’s Minstrels. Minstrel troops were wildly popular forms of entertainment in the 19^th century. The genre was created by Manhattan native Thomas D. Rice, a traveling actor who popularized a slave song, “Jump Jim Crow.”

   There was considerable discussion about “Dixie’s Land” during the war, and scores of different lyrics were written to the tune. That discussion spilled over into the after-war years. Some groups preferred the lyrics penned by former Confederate general Albert Pike over those by Dan Emmitt. Regardless, “Dixie’s Land” was never adopted as an official  National Anthem.[1] 

   In 1861, George H. Miles (1824-1871), an English professor in Maryland, under the pseudonym Earnest Halphin, penned the words to “God Save the South!” Although trained in law, Miles had found success in writing books and Broadway plays. He was obviously a Confederate sympathizer, but his further participation in the war effort seems lost to history.

   “God Save the South!” seems to have first appeared in print in New Orleans in June 1861. No author is given, only that it was “Contributed to the Sunday Delta.”[2]  New Orleans was the leading printer of Confederate sheet music during the war, with 167 pieces identified as coming from presses in the city.[3] Just a couple of weeks after the words appeared in the New Orleans newspaper, there appeared an advertisement in a Charleston newspaper advertising a “supply of new Southern” music. “God Save the South” was included in the listing.[4] Three months later, at a concert in the Odd Fellows Hall in New Orleans, “God Save the South! Set to the air of Britian’s national hymn, [was] the other performance of the evening.”[5]                                                                                                                   

   New Orleans fell in the spring of 1862, and several of the sheet music publishers went to Georgia. Starting in October 1862, Virginia newspapers began calling “God Save the South!” the Southern national anthem.[6] A version of the sheet music was published by C.T. DeCoeniel in Richmond, bearing a similar phrase: “Our National Confederate Anthem.” There were other editions as well, published in Baltimore, Charleston, and Macon/Savannah.[7]

   One Southern newspaper thought that the song was “what we have long wished for—a national anthem, breathing a spirt of patriotism and devotion suited to our troublous times. The pure and simple religious feeling which pervaded the poetry of this piece is beautifully interpreted by, and carried home to, the heart, in the deep pathos and majestic tones of the music. The sentiments of the anthem are perfectly in accordance with the religious feeling and faith of our people. . . . As a national anthem, we know nothing to compare with this sublimity.”[8]

   What did “God Save the South!” sound like? It was set to the same turn as “God Save the King,” the National anthem of the United Kingdom. “God Save the South!” is little remembered today. And if you ask the casual observer what the Confederate National anthem is, you will probably get the response, “Dixie.” It is unlikely that the high-browed members of Southern society would have ever consented to a minstrel tune being bestowed with the title, National Anthem, on Dixie’s Land.

For more information on Confederate music, check out Richard B. Harwell’s Confederate Music (1950) or Lawrence Abel’s  Singing the New Nation (2000).

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[1] Hardy, “Dixie’s Land,” America’s Civil War, May 2018.

[2] The Sunday Delta, June 30, 1861.

[3] Wolfe, “Music,” Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, 3:1100-1105.

[4] Charleston Daily Courier, July 19, 1861.

[5] The Times-Picayune, October 16, 1861.

[6] Richmond Enquirer, October 21, 1862.

[7] Harwell, Confederate Music, 59.

[8] Moore, The Civil War in Song and Story, 360.

Battle of the Bands

5th Virginia Infantry band
(Military Images, 1983)

   Music has always played an important part of military life, from the drums that woke them up in the morning or the brass bands that serenaded the soldiers off to sleep. As Robert E. Lee once famously said: “I don’t believe we can have an army without music.”[1] Musicians were not often under fire, but they did wage, on occasion, their own battles of the bands against the tooters on the other side.

   One such event took place on the eve of the battle of Murfreesboro (Stone’s River). It was December 30, 1862. Skirmishers had plied their deadly trade that day, as the armies moved into position. That night, the bands began to play. A Southern band struck up “Bonny Blue Flag,” which was answered by “Hail, Columbia,” and then “Yankee Doodle.” After the dueling went on for some time, one band began to play the haunting strains of “Home, Sweet Home,” with bands on each side joining in. “We could hear the sweet refrain as it died away on the cool frost air,” recalled a member of the 19^th Tennessee Infantry. This scene would be played out in different camps throughout the war.[2]  

   Just a couple of weeks earlier, a similar event occurred on the banks of the Rappahannock River, near Fredericksburg in Virginia. A Confederate band played “Dixie,” followed by a Union band playing “John Brown’s Body.” Then came “The Bonnie Blue Flag” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After a few moments of silence, a lone Federal bugler played the notes of “Home, Sweet Home.”[3]

   On May 2, 1863, as the battle of Chancellorsville got underway, Confederate artillery under Jubal Early dueled with Federals. One Federal officer noted that that during the bombardment “from the rebel lines came the clear notes of a band playing the air of ‘Dixie,’ a favorite tune with the Confederates. Three or four times they played it through, and then stopped. In a moment, a band in our own army commenced the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’”[4]

   During the siege of Vicksburg, the commander of Waul’s Legion (Texas) instructed E. W. Krause to play for the men, trying to raise their spirits. The Legion band began to play “in a very patriotic air ‘Dixie,’” to which a Federal band responded with “a very rude and unharmonious, double Forte accompaniment.” Federal artillery lent their music, “directed at the impudent bank in which we were sheltering.” Krause wrote that the practice was continued throughout the siege.[5]

   During much of 1864, the armies were close to each other. At daylight on July 4, Federal bands outside Petersburg shattered the early morning stillness with “a perfect hurricane of national airs.” The Confederate bands soon replied, with each side cheering their tunes, while groaning at those of the enemy. “After sundown our brass bands and those of the enemy indulged in a musical duel,” wrote a member of the Donaldsonville Artillery. 6 In the outskirts of Atlanta, on August 14, Washington Ives, of the 4^th Florida Infantry, recalled the “The Bands on both sides play every evening and as a band on either side plays, the partizans begin to yell. Three nights ago after the Fed. & Reb. had played several times for each other the troops on both sides began yelling. . . during which a great many men picked up their guns and accoutrements and jumped into the fortifications thinking the enemy was going to charge us.” [7]

   There are undoubtedly scores of other accounts and admittedly, these few jottings just scratch the surface. These tunes inspired men, as demonstrated by the account of the soldier in the 4^th Florida. The bands could be even more important in combat. Making music and making war might seem incompatible. In the end, the music played in camp by bands South and North had a profound impact not just in the moment, but for generations.

  

[1] Clark, NC Troops, 2:399.

[2] Daniel, Battle of Stones River, 68.

[3] Barton and Logue, The Civil War Soldier: A Historical Reader, 126.

[4] Mackowski and White, Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front,

[5] Woodworth and Grear, The Vicksburg Assaults, May 19-22, 1863, 86

[6] Greene, A Campaign of Giants – The Battle for Petersburg, 1:345

[7] Sheppard, By the Noble Baring of Her Sons, 194.

Confederate Music – a quick primer

 

Robert E. Lee once remarked that “I don’t believe we can have an army without music.”[1] Lee was referencing the brass band of the 26^th North Carolina Troops which serenaded the general several times during the war. Yet brass bands were not the only type of music encountered by Confederates during the war. There were the drum and fife corps, the brass bands, and the informal music encountered around the campfire.

Field Music – Kautz, in his Customs of Service (1864) hits the nail on the head when he writes “The law with regard to drum-majors is obscure.”[2] That might be said of the enlistment of musicians as a whole. Confederate regulations state that those recruits “found to posses a natural talent for music, to be instructed (besides the drill of the soldier) on the fife, bugle, and drum… boys of twelve years of age and upward may…be enlisted for this purpose.” “Regiments will be furnished with field music on the requisitions of their commanders.”[3] It would appear that most infantry regiments had a drum and fife corps, while artillery and cavalry commands had buglers. It would seem that the position was appointed from the ranks. And in most cases, there appears to be no more than a handful of musicians at any time. They were typically not boys. In the 16^th North Carolina, there were 24 men listed as musicians; the youngest was 18 and the oldest 35. In the 18^th North Carolina, there were some boys, (12-16 years old), but they were later discharged. These musicians were some of the hardest working men in the army. Everything was regulated by a drum call: there were calls for assembly, first sergeant’s call, reveille, retreat, tattoo. Drumbeats were used to keep step while on a march, set the pace for a double-quick march, signal a halt, and could be used in battle to command both skirmish lines and regular battle lines. Concerning the latter, it is seldom that we find reference to firing by drums during a battle. Bugle calls, especially for the cavalry, were far more useful.

Brass band of the 26th North Carolina

Brass Band – the band was different from the field music. It would almost seem that one regiment in a brigade (a brigade was typically composed of four to five regiments) would have a brass band. The purpose of the brass band was more to provide entertainment and as a morale boast, over the field music. Bands often performed in the evenings, serenading the men, and the generals. According to Oliver Lehman, a member of the band of the 33^rd North Carolina Troops/Lane’s brigade, the brass band played every morning at nine for guard mounting duty, at dress parade about sunset, and for reviews. Also, when the weather was favorable, the band played for an hour every evening.[4]  Many of these bandsmen were “professional” musicians. Lehman came from the same Moravian community that produced members of the band for the 26^th North Carolina.

Camp Fire Music – the various states and communities across the continent were a musical people. People sang at home, at taverns, at churches. And the soldiers brought that musical heritage with them. They sang church songs, and tavern songs, and quite a few made-up songs themselves. Fiddles, fifes, and maybe a banjo or guitar were commonly employed. Soldiers spent an enormous amount of time in camp, and the scratch of a fiddle could be heard many evenings as the soldiers sang about the war, about home, about loved ones they had not seen in months or years. At times, musicians would form bands and put on concerts and minstrel shows for their fellow soldiers. A couple of songs, like “Home Sweet Home” and “Lorena” made some soldiers so home sick that it was rumored they were banned from camp. Probably the most famous musician in the Confederate army was Sam Sweeny, one of three musician brothers well-known before the war. Sweeny was on the staff of JEB Stuart, following the general around and plucking tunes on his banjo.

Sam Sweeny playing banjo in camp. 

All of these types of music could boost morale among the soldiers. Writing from Florence, Alabama, November 17, 1864, Captain Thomas J. Key, 28^th Battalion Georgia Artillery, wrote that “The whole earth resounded and echoed with music this morning before the rising of the sun. Band after band commingled their soft and impressive notes, melting the hearts of some and buoying up the spirits of others.”[5] Many could probably join with Captain Key, extolling the virtues of a well-played song in camp, on the march, or in battle.

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[1] Clark, NC Troops, 2:399

[2] Kautz, Customs of Service, 76

[3] Confederate Regulations, 393.

[4] O. J. Lehman, "Reminiscences of the War Between the States." 1862 to 1865." The Union Republican, October 19, 1922.

[5] Cate, Two Soldiers: The Campaign Diaries of Thomas J. Key, CSA, December 7, 1863-May 17, 1865, and Robert J. Campbell, USA, January 1, 1864-July 21, 1864, 150.

The not-so-little drummer boys

This past weekend, I was in Gettysburg, and I found a good deal on a used drum for living history/reenacting programs. I had a drum when I was younger, and have always regretted selling it. I have a young man here in my household who will make a good drummer boy.

But that leads to this question: were the drummers really boys? I thought I would look at the field music of three different regiments and see what could find.

The three regiments that I chose, all infantry, were the 16th, 18th, and 58th. I went through and looked for men listed as musicians.

We will start with the 16th. There were 24 men listed as musicians. Eleven of these men served in a regimental band, Only one is listed as a fifer, and I suppose (but no proof) that the others might have played other wind instruments. Out of the 24, we have the ages of 19. Their average age was 23 years, by no means, boys. The youngest was 18, and the oldest, 35.

Next, I turned my attention to the 18th regiment. I found 11 who were listed as musicians. Nine were listed as drummers. Interestingly, there were several boys who enlisted who were later discharged. Their ages were 16, 12, 14, and 15. The oldest was 32. So in the 18th Regiment, there were some boys who, for about a year, served as drummers.

Finally, I looked at the 58th NCT. In this regiment, I found twelve men who served as musicians. Six were listed as drummers, three as fifers, and three just as musicians. The youngest was 17 years old, and the oldest was 32. Of the 11 who had their ages listed, they averaged 23 years of age.

Being a musician was not always a safe position. Of the 47 boys and men I surveyed, one was listed as killed in action, three wounded, of which two died, and three who died of disease.

I wonder what kind of numbers we would have if we surveyed all of the North Carolina regiments?

The photo is of Calvin Miller, 37th NCT.

And the band played...

I had a great question on Monday night while speaking in Thomasville - did the band of the 26th NCT stand and play "Nearer My God to Thee" on July 3 as the Confederate troops fell back after the failed Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble charge. I could not remember at the time, so I came home and looked it up and I thought I would share what I found.

My first go-to place was my own book - North Carolina Remembers Gettysburg. There is a post-war story from Samuel T. Mickey, who served as chief musician of the band of the 26th North Carolina from November 1, 1862, until captured at Amelia Court House on April 4, 1865. Mickey wrote:"I will say that on the second day of July, the Twenty-sixth and Eleventh bands were ordered to the front to play for our brigade, as they formed to go into action. Both bands consolidated and played until we were ordered to stop and return to the hospital." (Charlotte Observer, September 23, 1894)

Next, I turned my attention to Rod Gragg's Covered with Glory. He also mentions the 26th's band playing on July 2, with the band of the 11th NCST.  "Rousing tunes like 'Luto Quickstep,' 'Louisa Polka,' 'Cheer, Boys, Cheer,' 'Old North State,' 'Dixie,' and 'The Bonnie Blue Flag' were among the repertory." (148) However, there is no mention of the band playing after the charge.

Craig Chapman's More Terrible than Victory, a history of the 11th North Carolina Troops, came next. Chapman included this about July2: "During the afternoon, the 11th and 26th regimental bands entertained the troops with patriotic tunes. The melodies of 'God Save the South' and 'When this cruel War is Over' soothed the men and cheered them a bit." (102) There was no mention of a band playing afterwards.

In an essay entitled "'Tha Kill so Meny of us': The Twenty-sixth North Carolina at Gettysburg" by Greg Mast, which appeared in Company Front in 2008, we find that the regiment band of the 26th NCT was "Ordered to get their horns and play-and it was never done more faithfully all day long-and with more effect and the writer till this day has never heard such music that cheered him so-a gloom had settled over the entire regiment at the loss of comrades and friends... but it was soon entirely dispelled by the music and by 12 o'clock noon the command could raise a cheer." (17)

Assistant Surgeon George C. Underwood of the 26th North Carolina Troops, wrote in Volume II of Clark's North Carolina Regiments concerning the second day of the battle: "The regimental band (Captain Mickey's band) was ordered to play inspiring music to cheer the soldiers, whose spirits were depressed at the loss of so many of their comrades..." (362)

While I looked at several other sources (like Coddington) for information regarding the 26th NCT, I found not much to add. One final place I searched was Steven Cornelius's Music of the Civil War Era. Cornelius quotes Julius A. Leinbach, a member of the band of the 26th NCT: "It was therefore with heavy hearts that we went about our duties caring for the wounded. We worked until 11 o'clock that night... At 3 o'clock [the next morning] I was up again and at work. The second day out regiment was not engaged [because casualties were so high], but we were busily occupied all day in our sad task [of caring for the wounded]. While thus engaged, in the afternoon we were sent... to play for the men, and thus, perhaps, [to] cheer them somewhat... We accordingly went to the regiment and found the men much more cheerful than we were ourselves. We played for some time, the 11th NC Band playing with us, and the men cheered us lustily. Heavy cannonading was going on at the time, though not in our immediate front. We learned afterwards, from Northern papers, that our playing had been heard across the lines and caused wonder that we should play while fighting was going on around us. Some little while after we left, a bomb struck and exploded very close to the place where we had been standing, no doubt having been intended for us. " (206-207)

Based upon the above, I have concluded that the band of the 26th NCT was not the band playing on July 3 while the Confederates retreated. However, Cornelius adds this in the next paragraph:  "Terrible to imagine, but also infinitely moving, is the performance by the Confederate band playing Lowell Mason's hymn "Nearer My God To Thee" as the grim survivors of Pickett's Charge fell back into their lines following the failed attack." Not sure about his source on this one.

Have you heard this story before? Do you have a source for which Confederate band played this tune?