 |  |  | | The bloodiest episode of 1862 took place in the southwestern corner of Tennessee, near the Mississippi line. This was the Battle of Shiloh in which over 20,000 men died. A favorite songwriter of the period, William Shakespeare Hays, was moved to write a touching ballad about the battle’s aftermath: The Drummer Boy of Shiloh. | Among the skilled Confederate cavalrymen in the Virginia and Maryland campaigns, possibly the best known and most daring was James Ewell Brown Stuart, known as Jeb Stuart. With his cinnamon red hair and beard, his plumed hat, high boots, golden sash, and French saber, he was a striking figure. Stuart was also most skilled in probing Union lines and bringing back useful information about the enemy’s strength, along with unwilling prisoners and quantities of provisions and livestock. But Stuart was fatally wounded in May 1864, near Yellow Tavern, about ten miles north of Richmond, Virginia. Riding A Raid was written to commemorate his unique qualities. | A raider who operated in a different arena from Jeb Stuart was the reckless, fearsome John Morgan. A native of Kentucky, Morgan engaged in a two-year campaign throughout Indiana and Ohio pillaging and plundering, stealing horses and provisions, taking prisoners, and destroying or burning whatever he believed was of value to the enemy. In 1863 Morgan and some of his men were captured near Cincinnati and sent to the state prison at Columbus. Morgan was to be exchanged for a Union colonel in the hands of the Confederates. But Morgan and his brother Dick managed to dig a hole under the prison wall and escape. The song How Are You? John Morgan tells the story of his capture, his break out plans, and his success. |  |  |  | | With the exception of Robert E. Lee, the best-known figure in the Confederate fighting forces was General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, “Stonewall” Jackson. At the battle of Manassas in 1862 his brigade of Virginia infantrymen stood their ground so gallantly against the Union onslaught that another Confederate general exclaimed, “There stands Jackson like a stone wall.” His troops were known thereafter as the Stonewall Brigade, and Jackson was known by the descriptive surname until he fell in 1863. Many musical pieces paid tribute to him, but probably the best-written and most inspiring was a dramatic reading set to music called Stonewall Jackson’s Way. | During the war, the South was desperately short of food, especially for the men in the field. Thus songs were written about the food shortages. Although the soldiers griped about the scarcity and quality of their vittles, they had the spirit to poke fun at their plight, so these are good-humored songs. Short Rations is dedicated to the “Corn-fed Army of Tennessee.” The author, who referred to himself as “Ye Tragic,” was actually a Confederate soldier named John Alcee Augustin, who wrote the song in Dalton, Georgia in the winter of 1863. The composer, referred to as “Ye Comic,” is unknown.
| Among the great songs of the Union army was one written by Yankee bandmaster Patrick Gilmore, When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Southern songwriters adapted this stirring northern melody to verses setting forth their own accomplishments in For Bales. Its background stems from the great demand in the north for southern cotton, which prompted northern speculators to go to New Orleans to purchase it. The buyers then attempted to transport the cotton up the Mississippi River and sell it at high prices in the north. However, Union general Nathaniel P. Bank and his army, who were to protect the cotton as it moved to the north, were badly mauled by the Confederates under the command of Edmund Kirby Smith, who seized and burned most of the bales. The song describes how speculation in cotton could have disastrous results.
|  |  | Excluding the battle between the “Monitor” and the “Merrimac,” no naval engagement of the Civil War aroused the public more than the head-to-head duel between the “Alabama,” the South’s most famous sea-raider, captained by Raphael Semmes, and the Federal sloop “Kearsage,” commanded by John A. Winslow. The “Alabama,” which in two years had destroyed 58 vessels, challenged the “Kearsage” to a battle off Cherbourg, France, where she had put in for repairs. On June 19, 1864, the two vessels met. The “Kearsage’s” 11-inch guns fired balls twice the size of those fired by the “Alabama’s” 8-inch guns, and the southern raider’s gunners were no match for the accurate Yankees. Recognizing that he had met his match, Semmes decided to strike his colors to save the lives of his men. Within an hour and a half, the battered “Alabama” sank, “graceful even in her death,” according to one of her sailors. Soon the songs The Alabama and The Last of the Alabama were available, recounting the story in detail, from two points of view.
| General Robert E. Lee, a West Point graduate, was one of the country’s most inspiring leaders of military forces. Songs and instrumental pieces in his honor were popular, including a march written by Hermann A. Schreiner, a composer and publisher in Macon, Georgia, entitled General Lee’s Grand March.
|  |  | | | One of the South’s great poets was Father Abram J. Ryan, a Catholic priest. He was a chaplain in the Confederate army, ministering to the wounded in Tennessee in 1863 and after the war comforting the bereaved in Georgia and Alabama. His poems were published under the pseudonym “Moina,” and it was under that pen name that he wrote one of his most popular poems, The Sword of Robert Lee for which A. E. Blackmar arranged a musical setting. The best known of Father Ryan’s poems was Conquered Banner. Written a few months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and set to music by one of New Orleans’ most prolific and gifted composers, Theodore Von La Hache, it poignantly expresses the post-war feeling of the South. | |
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