Special Thanks to the University of Illinois, The Rare Book and Manuscript Library, The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
Women As Subjects of Civil War Music
Garrison, Lucy McKim,, Allen, William Francis,Ware, Charles Pickard,eds. Slave Songs Of The United States. New York, N.Y. : John Ross & Co., 1871. Music and Performing Arts Special Collections, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Garrison, Lucy McKim,, Allen, William Francis,Ware, Charles Pickard,eds. Slave Songs Of The United States. New York, N.Y. : John Ross & Co., 1871. Music and Performing Arts Special Collections, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Garrison, Lucy McKim,, Allen, William Francis,Ware, Charles Pickard,eds. Slave Songs Of The United States. New York, N.Y. : John Ross & Co., 1871. Music and Performing Arts Special Collections, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Garrison, Lucy McKim,, Allen, William Francis,Ware, Charles Pickard,eds. Slave Songs Of The United States. New York, N.Y. : John Ross & Co., 1871. Music and Performing Arts Special Collections, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Foster, Stephen Collins,, Anthony, A. V. S.Copeland, Charles. Nelly Was A Lady: Written And Composed By Stephen Collins Foster. Boston: Ticknor And Company, 1889. Music and Performing Arts Special Collection, University of Illinoist at Urbana-Champaign.
Foster, Stephen Collins,, Anthony, A. V. S.Copeland, Charles. Nelly Was A Lady: Written And Composed By Stephen Collins Foster. Boston: Ticknor And Company, 1889. Music and Performing Arts Special Collection, University of Illinoist at Urbana-Champaign.
Foster, Stephen Collins,, Anthony, A. V. S.Copeland, Charles. Nelly Was A Lady: Written And Composed By Stephen Collins Foster. Boston: Ticknor And Company, 1889. Music and Performing Arts Special Collection, University of Illinoist at Urbana-Champaign.
Foster, Stephen Collins,, Anthony, A. V. S.Copeland, Charles. Nelly Was A Lady: Written And Composed By Stephen Collins Foster. Boston: Ticknor And Company, 1889. Music and Performing Arts Special Collection, University of Illinoist at Urbana-Champaign.
Nelly Was A Lady, Stephen Collins Foster
Written by Stephen Foster, one of the most prominent Civil War composers of the time, Nelly Was A Lady considers the slave woman as a subject of admiration and love, a taboo perspective for the time. Redefining the slave woman as a lady reserved for the white genteel, positions Foster’s melody in early ideas of Civil War womanhood. The wife, hard broken after her husband is sold, demonstrates the sacrifice and devoted spirit society, particularly men, expected of women at the start of the war. Foster was unable to explicitly embrace abolition as his income was based on his popularity with the entire public, but Nelly Was A Lady attempted to address the humanity of slaves. It is a clear separation from the minstrel songs normally associated with slaves, ones of frivolity and carelessness, as the war forced Northern reporters, missionaries and soldiers, into predominately African-American communities in the South.
Slave Songs of the United States, Lucy McKim Garrison et al
Although music, particularly those of big brass bands, were was instrumental in the war efforts on both sides, the musicianship of African-Americans, freed and enslaved, were was often undocumented by historians. One of the earliest examples of African-American musicality, Slave Songs of the United States The book shows the natural ability of slaves, through hard-won experience, to translate power images and themes through song.
Different among the songs of freedom and salvation is “Charleston Gals,” celebrating styles of dance slaves enjoyed, often accompanied by self-taught fiddling (Southern 166-168). It is noted that the editors, being white and of post-Civil War sensibilities, admire slaves only in light of the barbarism they were assumed to display. The writers, noticing the slaves’ use of shorthand language in song, describe lyrics as “phonetic decay”. However abysmal the editors’ description of their slave composers, the musical and historic importance of the African-American song is not lost in this volume.
What Is Home Without A Mother?, Septimus Winner
Writing under both Alice Hawthorne and a myriad of pseudonyms, Septimus Winner was a Northern sympathizer, songwriter and performer of the period. Winner's first hit, “What Is Home Without A Mother” follows the pattern of using the mother/wife theme in songwriting and was adopted for the war effort by both armies. This song appealed to many as soldiers left home and hearth during the war. Its lyrics depict the mother figure as a casualty of battle, displaying popular belief of sacrificial womanhood during the Civil War. This idea contrasts greatly with diaries and manuscripts from the women themselves who acknowledged challenges without male figureheads, but became resourceful and active in the war.
Civil War music set the tone for the attitudes on the battlefield and at home in a time of tremendous conflict. Mere days after the Fort Sumter, publishers Root & Cady had already released a rallying cry about the first shots of war and the soldier’s right to defend God’s land. The ability of composers and lyricists to capture the emotion and excitement of each tenuous moment in war is one that has not been replicated in history. Publishers and creators of Civil War music dictated the stages of the war effort, calling for volunteers, lamenting losses, cheering wins and reinforcing the army’s right to victory. Most of all, songs appealed to popular culture and could be used for dances, church and marching to battle by changing a stanza or two. The subject matter of these scores varied as much as a battle’s victor, but women were a common feature. Songs created around American womanhood fixed upon the female form as a reason to fight, usually to protect their God-given virtues, as a wife or mother to signify home and hearth or as the home-spun sweetheart, carefree and quick to dance at a local ball (Snell 54). Few examples stray from these templates, offering a simplistic view of the Civil War woman as many took up the agricultural burden of her farm, lifted the hammer in the arsenal, or dressed herself in men’s clothing and became John Brown. Our examples of women in Civil War music provide a vision of all of these perspectives, supporting a modern woman that would later emerge after the trials of the war.