Part 2 — THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR[87]

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR[87]

By BRANDER MATTHEWS

(1852—). One of the most influential American critics and essayists, Professor of Dramatic Literature in Columbia University. He was one of the founders of The Authors' Club, and The Players, and a leader in organizing the American Copyright League. He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He is the author of works that illustrate many types of literature, including novels, short stories, essays, poems and plays. Among his books are: A Story of the Sea, and Other Stories; Pen and Ink; Americanisms and Briticisms; The Story of a Story; Vignettes of Manhattan; His Father's Son; Aspects of Fiction; Essays in English; The American of the Future.

When companionable people meet in pleasant converse, whether before the open fire at home, or in chance gatherings at any place, they tell one another about the interesting experiences that they have had or the discoveries that they have made. If you could place on paper what any one of them says, except in narration, and if you could, at the same time, show the feeling and the spirit of the speaker,—if you could in some way transfer the personality of the speaker to the paper,—you would, in all probability, produce an essay.

The author of The Songs of the Civil War has learned some interesting facts concerning our national songs. He communicates those facts as he would to a company of friends, indicating throughout his remarks his own interests and beliefs. His words are the pleasant words of friendship,—not the formal giving of information that characterizes most encyclopedia articles. That part of his essay which is given here is sufficient to indicate the charm of his presentation.

A national hymn is one of the things which cannot be made to order. No man has ever yet sat him down and taken up his pen and said, “I will write a national hymn,” and composed either words or music which a nation was willing to take for its own. The making of the song of the people is a happy accident, not to be accomplished by taking thought. It must be the result of fiery feeling long confined, and suddenly finding vent in burning words or moving strains. Sometimes the heat and the pressure of emotion have been fierce enough and intense enough to call forth at once both words and music, and to weld them together indissolubly once and for all. Almost always the maker of the song does not suspect the abiding value of his work; he has wrought unconsciously, moved by a power within; he has written for immediate relief to himself, and with no thought of fame or the future; he has builded better than he knew. The great national lyric is the result of the conjunction of the hour and the man. Monarch cannot command it, and even poets are often powerless to achieve it. No one of the great national hymns has been written by a great poet. But for his single immortal lyric, neither the author of the “Marseillaise”[88] nor the author of the “Wacht am Rhein”[89] would have his line in the biographical dictionaries. But when a song has once taken root in the hearts of a people, time itself is powerless against it. The flat and feeble “Partant pour la Syrie,” which a filial fiat made the hymn of imperial France, had to give way to the strong and virile notes of the “Marseillaise,” when need was to arouse the martial spirit of the French in 1870. The noble measures of “God Save the King,” as simple and dignified a national hymn as any country can boast, lift up the hearts of the English people; and the brisk tune of the “British Grenadiers” has swept away many a man into the ranks of the recruiting regiment. The English are rich in war tunes and the pathetic “Girl I Left Behind Me” encourages and sustains both those who go to the front and those who remain at home. Here in the United States we have no “Marseillaise,” no “God Save the King,” no “Wacht am Rhein”; we have but “Yankee Doodle” and the “Star-spangled Banner.” More than one enterprising poet, and more than one aspiring musician, has volunteered to take the contract to supply the deficiency; as yet no one has succeeded. “Yankee Doodle” we got during the revolution, and the “Star-spangled Banner” was the gift of the War of 1812; from the Civil War we have received at least two war songs which, as war songs simply, are stronger and finer than either of these—“John Brown's Body” and “Marching Through Georgia.”

Of the lyrical outburst which the war called forth but little trace is now to be detected in literature except by special students. In most cases neither words nor music have had vitality enough to survive a quarter of a century. Chiefly, indeed, two things only survive, one Southern and the other Northern; one a war-cry in verse, the other a martial tune: one is the lyric “My Maryland” and the other is the marching song “John Brown's Body.” The origin and development of the latter, the rude chant to which a million of the soldiers of the Union kept time, is uncertain and involved in dispute. The history of the former may be declared exactly, and by the courtesy of those who did the deed—for the making of a war song is of a truth a deed at arms—I am enabled to state fully the circumstances under which it was written, set to music, and first sung before the soldiers of the South.

“My Maryland” was written by Mr. James R. Randall, a native of Baltimore, and now residing in Augusta, Georgia. The poet was a professor of English literature and the classics in Poydras College at Pointe Coupee, on the Faussee Riviere, in Louisiana, about seven miles from the Mississippi; and there in April, 1861, he read in the New Orleans Delta the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore. “This account excited me greatly,” Mr. Randall wrote in answer to my request for information; “I had long been absent from my native city, and the startling event there inflamed my mind. That night I could not sleep, for my nerves were all unstrung, and I could not dismiss what I had read in the paper from my mind. About midnight I rose, lit a candle, and went to my desk. Some powerful spirit appeared to possess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded to write the song of 'My Maryland.' I remember that the idea appeared to first 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 inspiration of the intellect. I was stirred to a desire for some way linking my name with that of my native State, if not 'with my land'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 widespread and instantaneous popularity of the lyric I had been so strangely stimulated to write.” Mr. Randall read the poem the next morning to the college boys, and at their suggestion sent it 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 had made a great hit, and that, whatever might be the fate of the Confederacy, the song would survive it.”

Published in the last days of April, 1861, when every eye was fixed on the border States, the stirring stanzas of the Tyrtæan bard[90] appeared in the very nick of time. There is often a feeling afloat in the minds of men, undefined and vague for want of one to give it form, and held in solution, as it were, until a chance word dropped in the ear of a poet suddenly crystallizes this feeling into song, in which all may see clearly and sharply reflected what in their own thought was shapeless and hazy. It was Mr. Randall's good fortune to be the instrument through which the South spoke. By a natural reaction his burning lines helped to fire the Southern heart. To do their work well, his words needed to be wedded to music. Unlike the authors of the “Star-spangled Banner” and the “Marseillaise,” the author of “My Maryland” had not written it to fit a tune already familiar. It was left for a lady of Baltimore to lend the lyric the musical wings it needed to enable it to reach every camp-fire of the Southern armies. To the courtesy of this lady, then Miss Hetty Cary, and now the wife of Professor H. Newell Martin, of Johns Hopkins University, I am indebted for a picturesque description of the marriage of the words to the music, and of the first singing of the song before the Southern troops.

The house of Mrs. Martin's father was the headquarters for the Southern sympathizers of Baltimore. Correspondence, money, clothing, supplies of all kinds went thence through the lines to the young men of the city who had joined the Confederate army. “The enthusiasm of the girls who worked and of the 'boys' who watched for their chance to slip through the lines to Dixie's land found vent and inspiration in such patriotic songs as could be made or adapted to suit our needs. The glee club was to hold its meeting in our parlors one evening early in June, and my sister, Miss Jenny Cary, being the only musical member of the family, had charge of the program on the occasion. With a school-girl's eagerness to score a success, she resolved to secure some new and ardent expression of feelings that by this time were wrought up to the point of explosion. In vain she searched through her stock of songs and airs—nothing seemed intense enough to suit her. Aroused by her tone of despair, I came to the rescue with the suggestion that she should adapt the words of 'Maryland, my Maryland,' which had been constantly on my lips since the appearance of the lyric a few days before in the South. I produced the paper and began declaiming the verses. 'Lauriger Horatius!'[91] she exclaimed, and in a flash the immortal song found voice in the stirring air so perfectly adapted to it. That night, when her contralto voice rang out the stanzas, the refrain rolled forth from every throat present without pause or preparation; and the enthusiasm communicated itself with such effect to a crowd assembled beneath our open windows as to endanger seriously the liberties of the party.”

“Lauriger Horatius” had long been a favorite college song, and it had been introduced into the Cary household by Mr. Burton N. Harrison, then a Yale student. The air to which it is sung is used also for a lovely German lyric, “Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,” which Longfellow has translated “O Hemlock Tree.” The transmigration of tunes is too large and fertile a subject for me to do more here than refer to it. The taking of the air of a jovial college song to use as the setting of a fiery war-lyric may seem strange and curious, but only to those who are not familiar with the adventures and transformations a tune is often made to undergo. Hopkinson's[92] “Hail Columbia!” for example, was written to the tune of the “President's March,” just as Mrs. Howe's[93] “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was written to “John Brown's Body.” The “Wearing of the Green,” of the Irishman, is sung to the same air as the “Benny Havens, O!” of the West-Pointer. The “Star-spangled Banner” has to make shift with the second-hand music of “Anacreon in Heaven,” while our other national air, “Yankee Doodle,” uses over the notes of an old English nursery rhyme, “Lucy Locket,” once a personal lampoon in the days of the “Beggars' Opera,”[94] and now surviving in the “Baby's Opera” of Mr. Walter Crane.[95] “My Country, 'tis of Thee,” is set to the truly British tune of “God Save the King,” the origin of which is doubtful, as it is claimed by the French and the Germans as well as the English. In the hour of battle a war-tune is subject to the right of capture, and, like the cannon taken from the enemy, it is turned against its maker.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

Why cannot a national hymn be made to order?

Why is it true that the great national hymns have not been written by great poets?

What establishes the worth of a national hymn?

Name the best national hymns of the United States.

What are some of the best national hymns of other countries?

What type of music is necessary for a good national hymn?

Tell the story of the origin of My Maryland.

What sources gave rise to the music of many of our national hymns?

Explain the last sentence of the essay.

Point out the respects in which the essay differs from an encyclopedia article.

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

1. Popular Songs 11. Games

2. Popular Music 12. Athletic Sports

3. Popular Opera 13. Streets

4. Fashions in Dress 14. Furniture

5. Every Day Habits 15. Dancing

6. Hats 16. Mother Goose Rimes

7. Buttons 17. Favorite Poems

8. Uniforms 18. Legends

9. Social Customs 19. Evangeline

10. Architecture 20. Political Customs

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

When you have chosen a subject consult encyclopedias and other works of reference and find out all you can that is peculiarly interesting to you. Do not make any attempt to record all the facts that you may learn. Select those that make some deep appeal to you and that will be likely to have unusual interest for others. When you write do all that you can to avoid the encyclopedia method. Write in a pleasantly familiar manner that will carry your interests and your personality.

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