Video
Junior Ranger Series: Write Your Own Battle Song
Transcript
Hey everybody my name is Emily Avery. I am one of the Rangers here at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. Now this is our third program in our Junior Ranger series this year, so if you are returning and have done the first two programs with us welcome back. I hope you guys had a really great summer. I know we were super busy here at the park and maybe you even got a chance to come and see us in person. Now this is the third of four programs- we will have one more this year. For those of us who are new to the Junior Ranger series, welcome. The other two programs are available to watch on our YouTube channel if you'd like to go back and check those out. And I say that because if you participate in three of the four Junior Ranger programs in this series this year you will earn a special piece of Junior Ranger swag. So again if you want to go back and check some of those other ones out, you can check it out on our YouTube channel as well.
So today we're going to be talking about Civil War music. Music in the Civil War had kind of two main purposes. One was actually going to be used in both camp and battle, and it was more instructional. And so a lot of the musicians in the regiments, a lot of them would play a drum like the one you see back here at the top of the 10th Ohio monument.
And so drum, fife, bugle- those instruments were often used during battle to signal for the men different commands, but then also during camp to tell different times of day. If you want to know a little bit more about those particular musicians and the music that they played, you can actually go out and check out my friend Will's video that he did about the roles that actually kids had during the Civil War, because a lot of these musicians were actually going to be younger than 18. They're going to be kind of younger and that's going to be one of the roles that they could play during the Civil War as soldiers. So if you want to go and check that out that is also on our YouTube channel.
Today we're going to be talking about kind of the other main category of music. We're going to be talking about music that was more to boost the morale and lift the spirits of the soldiers, kind of like the patriotic songs that we sing today. So these songs were sung by both sides, Union and Confederacy, they had their own songs and they actually did share some songs as well. And it kind of makes sense that a lot of these songs are going to come during a time of war. You guys probably already know a song that did come out of a major war in American history not the Civil War but the War of 1812. Our national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner" was actually written during the War of 1812, and it was written about a battle and it was written so that people would remember that and it's about the raising of the flag and it's a very meaningful song obviously because it's our national anthem today. So music in the Civil War for morale for the soldiers would kind of follow the same idea.
Now on the Union side, there were two main songs that really stuck, they were kind of the two most popular ones. There are going to be a lot but the two that you're going to have the soldiers singing, probably the most or most of them knowing, are going to be the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and then the "Battle Cry of Freedom". Now notice both of them have "battle" in the title, that's also going to not be a coincidence. They are written about battles again to kind of keep these men's spirits up, to remind them what they're fighting for, to remind them of why they are where they are. So the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", this song was actually going to be written in 1861 at the very beginning of the war. And Julia Ward Howe is a woman and she goes and visits a Union soldiers camp in Washington, D.C., and she's walking around and she's seeing these camps and she's hearing about battle, and she wakes up one morning and she's very inspired, and so she writes the lyrics to this song the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Now the tune, the melody, to this song actually already existed. And so what she does is she takes this tune and she's going to add her own lyrics and the lyrics get published. They get published in a really popular publication called Atlantic Monthly. It get published in 1862 and all of a sudden it becomes really really popular. All of a sudden the sheet music that is going to have both the melody, the tune, the notes and the lyrics, are going to be selling out everywhere in the Union.
Now for those of you who play an instrument you probably know what I'm talking about when I say sheet music. You know what that looks like, you may play an instrument like a violin or maybe a brass instrument like a trumpet or piano. And you know that the notes represent certain notes that you play on your instrument and when you string them together you get a certain melody. Now of course this is always going to be before we have anything like iTunes, we don't have anything where we can stream the music, so if you wanted to learn the song, if you wanted to know the lyrics you were going to have to get the sheet music and so that's kind of the way that things are going to circulate back then.
Now the other song that was very, very popular, like I said before is going to be the "Battle Cry of Freedom". Now this song is really interesting because it's actually written, and not just the words but also the tune is new, and it gets written in one day. In 1862, in the summer Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, calls for Union soldiers, for volunteers, to the army. And so in response to that there's a man named George Root. He's actually a pretty popular composer, he's a pretty popular songwriter for patriotic songs back then, and he writes the song in a single day in response to Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers. Now the words to the "Battle Cry of Freedom" and even the words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" are going to talk about things like pride in the cause of the Union, they're going to call it a noble cause. The "Battle Cry of Freedom" over and over they're going to be talking about rallying around the flag and welcoming soldiers into the army and how that is a very brave thing to do. And then there's going to be over and over they're going to sing the "Battle Cry of Freedom" which is interesting because they're shouting that and that's what they're doing while they're singing this song. And so these songs are very patriotic, they mean a lot to these Union soldiers, and again the music that sheet music that is going to be produced is going to be selling very quickly. I actually do have a picture and a couple of those pieces of sheet music to show you and so you can look the cover of that sheet music is actually pretty elaborate, pretty decorative, and then the music. You guys again those of you who play instruments probably recognize a little bit. They would take that and the musicians would learn that, and that's how they would learn the song. So that's pretty cool.
Now on the Confederate side, again they're going to have some of their own songs too. Some that are pretty popular. We're going to have a tune called "Dixie" or "Dixieland". Some of you may have even heard of it. The tune itself already exists by the Civil War, that melody, those notes, they're actually pretty popular everywhere. However when the lyrics are written, and the interesting thing is nobody knows exactly who wrote the lyrics. They're kind of different people take credit, different people are attributed to it, but we don't have one particular person. But the song itself becomes almost like a national anthem for the Confederate States of America. It's actually going to be played at Jefferson Davis' inauguration, he's the President of the Confederate States, and when he's sworn in they play that song. That's how important it is to the Confederacy, the lines of that song talk about the south being home, talk about that being where they're from and it helps to remind the soldiers that's where their their home is, that's what they're fighting for.
There's another song that's really popular and that one's also going to be called that's called the "Bonnie Blue Flag." Now what's really cool about this song and special to this place the Chickamauga Battlefield is that the Bonnie Blue Flag, the song that this flag, this the flag that this song is written about, is going to be a big blue flag with a white star in the middle. Now that flag is actually going to be the battle flag for the Army of Tennessee, that's the Confederate Army that's fighting here at Chickamauga. Which means that Bonnie Blue Flag would have been seen on this field during the Battle of Chickamauga in September of 1863. So that's pretty cool. Now the song itself is going to be written by Harry McCarthy, and again he's going to take a different melody, he takes a melody that's already written, it's an Irish song, it's called the "Irish Jaunting Car", and he takes that and he writes new lyrics. The lyrics to this song, it's a little bit longer than "Dixie", and it actually is going to list in the verses the order of the states as they seceded from the Union. And so as each state secedes, it talks about it, it kind of applauds it, and then the chorus is really a big cheer for the south, a big cheer for southern rights. And so this song would be sung by soldiers as kind of a celebration of their kind of home states, their kind of country that they were fighting for, and that was going to boost their spirits as well.
So both sides are going to have songs that are going to be very important to them, song lyrics are going to mean something very meaningful to them and you guys might even have songs that you know that mean something special to you. Maybe you have a special story that goes with that song and it's very personal and you know that when you hear it or when you sing it it's going to be that all the more special, and so some of these songs were definitely going to be like that for these soldiers.
Now I've said a couple of times that some of these songs are going to come about by taking the melodies, the tunes, from songs that already exist and then add new lyrics to them. Now that happens multiple times both during the Civil War and actually even earlier, before the Civil War, actually all the way back in the American Revolution, before and during the American Revolution, when the country is fighting for their independence against Great Britain. There's a song that's written to an old tune that actually most of us probably know. If you've ever sung the song "My Country 'Tis of Thee", that tune, if you were to go online maybe and search for "God Save the Queen", the kind of national anthem of the United Kingdom, you'll see the tunes are exactly the same. And there's a reason why: when the colonists, when the Americans, are fighting for their independence, they're going to take the national anthem of the country they're fighting against and they're going to write their own lyrics about their own country about the country they have pride in. And so it's kind of a fun song for them to sing because it actually kind of pokes a little bit of fun at the British, kind of makes fun of their national anthem a little bit, and then today obviously we know this song has stuck around for a really long time and we sing it today on patriotic occasions which is pretty cool.
So there is one other song that some of you may be familiar with, that the tune is from the Civil War, but the words are a little bit different to the song that we sing today. Now this tune it's sometimes called a nursery rhyme because it's really popular when kids are learning how to count the song is "The Ants Go Marching". And so you hear the song "The Ants Go Marching", first they go one by one and then the ants go marching two by two and then three by three all the way up to ten, and so it's kind of a counting song. But that tune is actually taken from a song during the Civil War, it's called "When Johnny Comes Marching Home". And just like it sounds that song is all about when the soldiers are going to be coming home from battle what a happy day that's going to be in the families that are wishing for that to come. So it kind of makes sense that actually that song was going to be sung by people actually on both sides, both of these sides whether you had a soldier fighting for the Union or the Confederacy, you wanted them home safe and sound, and so this song was not just one maybe sung by the soldiers but you also could sing it even if you weren't in the military because it was a song that talked about how much you wanted your loved one, your soldiers safe and sound at home.
So that song "The Ants Go Marching", we are actually going to use that song, we're going to use the tune, and we're going to do what some of these men and women did back during the Civil War, we're going to take that tune and we are going to write our own lyrics to it. Now I know that sounds kind of complicated, it might sound a little overwhelming, but we're going to have a little help. So if you are watching this online and you go down, you can actually download, I have a worksheet for you that's going to help us out with this. And what you're going to do on the front of the worksheet you're actually going to just provide some specific words. I ask you for words that are parts of speech, so like nouns and verbs and adjectives, if you don't know exactly what those are, you might need a grown-up to help you out with that a little bit. But you're going to pick those words and then you're going to flip the sheet over and there will be blanks in the song lyrics and it will tell you which words that you chose need to go in which blank. And so then you'll have your lyrics and you sing that to the tune of "The Ants Go Marching" or "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", and at first they might not make sense, your lyrics might not make sense because again you're choosing the the words without knowing where they're going to go, so you might want to go back and fix it a little bit or they might be really silly, that's okay too.
But I want you to have fun with it, be creative. You know you are writing your own song here and I also ask you to give your song a title. So when you're happy with those lyrics, what I'd love for you to do is to take a picture of them, if you want to be in the picture too that's great. And I would love for you to post that on social media, and you can tag our park which is @chickamauganps or you can email it to the park at chch_education@nps.gov, and that link will also be beneath us here. And so you can take a picture of yourself with those song lyrics, if you're feeling really brave you can sing it in a little video, and send that to us as well, we'd love to see it, but that's going to be our activity.
So I cannot wait to see what you guys come up with, kind of writing your own songs, writing your own lyrics to a battle song. I think it's going to be really fun, again be creative have fun with it. I can't wait to see your photos, and then tune in next month, it'll actually be my friend Chris who's going to be doing our final Junior Ranger series, so keep your eyes peeled for that. And guys I hope you have a great rest of your Fall, again wait for my friend Chris to do his program next month and hopefully I will see you guys soon around here at the park. You all have a great day!
Description
The nineteenth century was really no different, in terms of music, than today. There were popular songs that people learned to play and sing. Many of these songs, during the War, had an impact on soldiers’ morale, both on and off the battlefield. Songs written at this time were often adopted by soldiers as personal anthems with their upbeat melodies and patriotic themes. In exploring these songs, children will learn about the origins of music in the Civil War and have an opportunity to write their own battl
Duration
17 minutes, 19 seconds
Credit
NPS
Date Created
09/30/2021
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