The Songs We Sang

John Hartwell

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In 1886, former first-sergeant Samuel H. Putnam published The Story of Company A, 25th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers. Rather than a formal history, it was written "for the boys" -- a nostalgic reminiscence of what they had all experienced during the war years, naming many names, and telling stories about just about every man in Company A. It's the kind of memoir a descendant of any of those men would treasure.

The 25th had begun its service in North Carolina, as part of the Burnside expedition, seeing its first combat at Roanoke. Later they moved to Virginia, for the Bermuda Hundred campaign, lost heavily at Drewery's Bluff, and heavier still (65% casualties) in the charnel house of Cold Harbor. Then, reduced to a battalion of 3 companies, returned to Newbern to end the war quietly in garrison.

Starting on p. 214, Putnam speaks of the stories and songs that lifted their hearts:
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A book I have and enjoy is "Poems and Songs of the Civil War", edited by Lois Hill. I quote from jacket on the book: "Poems and Songs of the Civil War" is a unique volume in which the fierce patriotism and high emotions aroused in a nation divided and at war with itself run as thickly as the blood on the battlefields. It is the voice of America singing in joy and sorrow and it is the literary heritage of the Civil War."
 
I love seeing old songs like this - the non-patriotic ones that soldiers might have picked up during their youth in the 1840s and 1850s that they brought with them to war.

I wonder if the tunes are known for any of the songs mentioned above. The three crows song seems to have survived as a nursery rhyme. I found this video which seems like it is the same song though I can't be sure if it is the same tune and lyrics as would be sung during the war:

The writing is somewhat unclear - it seems the "Uncle Abraham" lyrics are a continuation of the crow song but I'm not positive?

I have no clue as to a tune for the "shell" song or the "chicken" one.

Annie Laurie is an old Scottish song. Found this; no idea if it is a Civil War era tune being used or Civil War era words being sung:

I'm also tremendously curious as to how the soldiers learned these songs. Were they widely known, or did only Henry Goulding know the lyrics and the rest learned it from him?

And what of the songs the soldiers made up on their own - were any written down?

I'd love to find lyrics and a tune for some of the "rough, comic songs" he sang - as sentimental as the 19th Century undoubtedly was I find it hard to believe ALL of the songs were either melancholy or patriotic.

He also talks about singing "old Negro melodies, college songs...as well as gems from the operas." I wonder if anyone can hazard a guess as to what those songs might be.

Were minstrel songs like Miss Lucy Long, Old Dan Tucker, and others widely sung by soldiers?
 
Minstrel songs were the top 40 of the day. Americans were a singing people at the time. We have, regrettably, lost some of that since the transistor radio and the ability to take your private music with you. They sang in school, at church, at home. Someone in nearly every household played an instrument to accompany. Songs were learned from songbooks and sheet music that could be purchased wherever you got the newspaper. People took their hymnals home from church so they sang from them outside Sunday morning. And they passed songs along generationally. "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines" was obviously a favorite of the Ingalls family. Laura recorded virtually all the lyrics in her "Little House" books. It had disappeared into obscurity by the time I read them in the early 70s. I was about 35 when I finally found the tune in an old songbook.
 
Never thought about that- we did sing a lot! It wasn't that long ago, either- songs were a huge part of life, in school, church, meetings, picnics. OH and camp. Your alma mater wasn't just something you learned for graduation day.

" The Cyclopaedia of Popular Songs ', 1866 should have era songs the soldiers knew.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433112024355;view=1up;seq=13
 
It's amusing that Confederate Berry Benson sang the Yankee song Jubiloo and got the column to join in when they left the trenches of Petersburg.
 
As of August 1862, "Goober Peas" was popular in the 18th Georgia, while Hood's Texans preferred "Yellow Rose of Texas." (Feed Them the Steel!, recollections of Capt. James Lile Lemon, 18th Georgia)

Around that same time period, Brig. Gen. Henry L. Benning's favorite tune was "The Gal [or Girl] I Left Behind Me." (The Climactic Struggle of the 2nd and 20th Georgia, by Phillip T. Tucker)

In June 1863, the strains of "Tom, March On" had a "most exhilarating effect" on the marching men of Rodes' division. (C. D. Grace, Confederate Veteran, vol. 5)

Still in winter quarters as of April 1863, a South Carolina brigade supported a company of minstrels known as the "Kershaw Palmetto Minstrels." A soldier wrote, "They make fine music. Our quarters are near enough to get a benefit at all times. Not a day or scarcely a night passes without preaching, prayer meeting, or the Minstrels within hearing. (James “Newt” Martin, Company E, 3rd South Carolina)
 
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