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Marching Through Georgia

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For the S. M. Stirling novel, see Marching Through Georgia (novel).
Original 1865 sheet music cover of "Marching Through Georgia" by S. Brainard Sons.

"Marching Through Georgia"[a] is an American Civil War-era marching song written and composed by Henry Clay Work (1832–1884) in 1865. It is sung from the perspective of a Union soldier who had participated in Sherman's March to the Sea; he looks back on the momentous triumph after which Georgia became a "thoroughfare for freedom" and the Confederacy was left on its last legs.

Work made a name for himself in the Civil War for penning heartfelt, rousing tunes that reflected the Union's struggle and progress. The popular publishing house Root & Cady employed him in 1861—a post he maintained throughout the war. Following the March to the Sea, the Union's pivotal triumph that left Confederate resources in tatters and civilians in anguish, Work was inspired to write a commemorative song which would become the campaign's unofficial theme tune, "Marching Through Georgia".

The song was released in January 1865 to widespread success. One of few Civil War compositions that withstood the war's end, it cemented a place in veteran reunions and marching parades. Today, "Marching Through George" is nigh synonymous with the state of Georgia, even though residents look upon it with contempt for glorifying Sherman's annihilative campaign. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman himself, to whom the song is dedicated, famously grew to despise it after being subjected to its strains in every public gathering he attended.

"Marching Through Georgia" also lent the tune to numerous partisan hymns such as "The Land" and "Billy Boys". Beyond the United States, troops from all over the world have adopted it as a marching standard, from the Japanese in the Russo–Japanese War to the British in World War Two. Many musicologists consider the song the most fruitful of Work's career and among the most iconic of the Civil War.

Background

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Work as a songwriter

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Unionist composer Henry Clay Work who wrote "Marching Through Georgia" and many other prolific patriotic songs.

Henry Clay Work was a printer by trade, operating in Chicago ever since 1855. However, his true passion rested in songwriting, which he had cultivated a deep penchant for as a child.[1] After years of submitting poems to local newspapers, he published a complete song in 1853, "We Are Coming, Sister Mary".[2] Eight years later, the American Civil War broke out,[3] launching his songwriting ventures into a "fecund" career.[4] That year, Work signed up for a post at Root & Cady, the then-most popular publishing firm.[5] George F. Root, its director, was soundly impressed by his song submission "Kingdom Coming" and promptly assigned him the post.[6]

Music was of utmost importance in the Civil War;[7] Journalist Irwin Silber comments: "soldiers and civilians of the Union states were inspired and propagandized by a host of patriotic songs."[8] Work delivered, penning 25 Unionist songs from 1861 to 1865, chief among them: "Kingdom Coming" (1862), "Grafted into the Army" (1862), "Song of a Thousand Years" (1863), "Babylon is Fallen" (1863), "Wake Nicodemus" (1864) and "Marching Through Georgia" (1865).[9] Their "intense partisanship" is owed to Work's devout allegiance to the Union cause, itself rooted in his abolitionist background.[10] As a child, he passed much time among freed slaves in the Underground Railroad, on which the family home was situated. A bitter hatred of slavery soon consumed him.[11] His wartime compositions imparted this sentiment,[10] no less than his minstrel songs conveying the hardships of plantation life.[12]

In general, Work is commended for genuinely communicating the feelings of Union civilians through music.[13] The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians notes: "More than perhaps any other songwriter Work captured the deeply felt emotions of the Civil War [...]"[4] For instance, the minstrel tune "Kingdom Coming" accompanied African American troops marching down South,[12] and "The Song of a Thousand Years" consoled civilians at the height of Confederate progress in the Battle of Gettysburg.[14] This sense of empathy, along with his mastery of melody,[15] fueled one of the most successful songwriting careers in the war.[16]

By 1865, Work had written several Civil War staples.[9] Root & Cady was prospering, reveling in the success of its latest hit "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!".[17] At the war's eve, he penned three final pieces,[18] the latter two being "Ring the Bell, Watchman", invoking Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard's evacuation of Charleston in February,[19] and "'Tis Finished!, or Sing Hallelujah", glorifying Maj. Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in April closing the conflict.[20] "Marching Through Georgia", the first of the final three, marked the apex of Work's career up to that point.[21] Released on January 9, 1865,[22] it commemorates the March to the Sea, a defining Union triumph that had taken place a few weeks prior. The song is dedicated to the campaign's mastermind, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman.[23] While other contemporary songs honored the march, such as H. M. Higgins's "General Sherman and His Boys in Blue" and S. T. Gordon's "Sherman's March to the Sea", Work's composition towers over them all.[24]

The March to the Sea

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I can make the march and make Georgia howl.

— Sherman to Grant on October 9, 1864, before the March to the Sea[25]

Sherman's March to the Sea was "the most dramatic military campaign of the Civil War."[26] Lasting from November 15 to December 21, 1864,[b] the 285-mile advance from Atlanta to Savannah bifurcated the Confederacy and shattered Southern morale. A Union victory was on the cards.[27] At the campaign's end, Gen. John W. Geary remarked: "This last campaign of Sherman has almost disemboweled the rebellion [...]"[28]

Prior to the march, Sherman had initiated a conquest of Atlanta. After three months of hostilities, the city fell to Union troops and, by September 2, it was completely evacuated and left in ruins. The Northern victory assured civilians, disillusioned by four years of a primarily bloody stalemate, that the war was soon to end.[29] Sherman felt confident enough to pursue another ambitious campaign in Georgia. He eyed the coastal city of Savannah which, if captured, would split the Confederacy in half. While marching to Savannah, his troops would seize every resource they could find and scourge every structure in their path, with few exceptions.[30] In late September the plan was finalized but Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant hesitated to accept a march through the South before the Southern army was destroyed. After Sherman dealt with Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood's troubling advance to Nashville, Georgia was freed from significant Confederate presence.[31] Grant felt confident enough to finally accept the plan.[32] Historian John Ford Rhodes commends Sherman for his granite and prowess: "No general, who lacked qualities of daring and resolution, would have persisted in his determination to advance through Georgia [...] especially when Grant for a time doubted the wisdom of the movement."[33] After destroying all buildings and communication lines in Atlanta, the plan took action.[34]

Map of the March to the Sea, lasting from November 15 to December 21, 1864.

1868 engraving depicting the march's impact on Georgian civilians and territory by Alexander Hay Ritchie.

On November 15 62,000 Union troops left Atlanta and commenced the March to the Sea.[35] Bearing only 20 days' worth of rations, they would have to scavenge the land for food and resources to sustain themselves. Sherman, who affirmed their entitlement to enemy territory,[36] ordered them to "forage liberally on the country."[37] While some regulations were imposed, they were hardly observed.[36]

The South was caught off guard by the campaign and never managed to muster effective resistance. At any given point, Sherman's army only faced a maximum of 13,000 Confederate troops. Progress was smooth and nigh undisturbed.[38] He recalls in his memoirs: "[Maj. Gen. Hardee, his main rival, had] not forced us to use anything but a skirmish-line, though at several points he had erected fortifications and tried to alarm us by bombastic threats."[39]

This success is partly owed to the army's deceitful movements; the two flanks intended to confuse the Confederates as to which city Sherman was destined to—Macon, Augusta or Savannah. Howard's wing, joined by Kilpatrick's cavalry, seemed to head toward Macon while Slocum's appeared to rush to Augusta. In fact, the target was Milledgeville, Georgia's then-capital, which Slocum claimed on November 23. The first notable engagement occurred on November 22 at Griswoldville when Howard's wing came into contact with Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler's and Brig. Gen. Pleasant J. Philips's militia. The Confederate resistance quickly collapsed.[40] Only minor skirmishes ensued, as Sherman covered 15 miles a day without having to engage in prolonged conflict.[41]

On December 10 Sherman arrived at the outskirts of Savannah, ending the march and commencing the city's takeover. Following the Second Battle of Fort McAllister, Maj. Gen. William J. Hardee and his men withdrew to Charleston on December 20. The next day, Sherman's troops peacefully moved in, ending the March to the Sea.[42] The path to the Carolinas was now open. Sherman waged an equally destructive and effective campaign on the two states the next year, culminating in the close of the Western theater.[43]

Throughout the march, troops left destruction in their tracks. Beyond plundering resources, the army was ordered to lay waste to public buildings and infrastructure.[44] Sherman did lay out disciplinary rules, such as generally forbidding interference with private property, but could not enforce them;[36] at one point, after hearing of the takeover of Howell Cobb's plantation, he wrote to the local militia: "spare nothing."[45] Sure enough, not much was spared. Railroads, warehouses, gin houses, mills and dwellings were first appropriated and then set ablaze.[46] Nearly a fifth of Georgian cultivated land was scorched.[47] An eyewitness comments: "One could track the line of Sherman’s march all through Georgia and South Carolina by the fires upon the horizon."[48] Georgians grew increasingly anxious during the campaign considering many would return to their residencies and farms to find all their property displaced, missing or destroyed.[46] This fit Sherman's strategy as he attempted to persuade Southerners that the war was not worth supporting anymore: "They don't know what war means, but when the rich planters of the Oconee and Savannah see their fences and corn and hogs and sheep vanish before their eyes they will have something more than a mean opinion of the 'Yanks.'"[49] However, that is not to say that the havoc never reached excess. Unwarranted pillaging, burning and pilfering was inevitable at the hands of frenzied troops who periodically defied their generals' commands.[50]

Author David J. Eicher writes of the March to the Sea: "Sherman had accomplished an amazing task. He had defied military principles by operating deep within enemy territory and without lines of supply or communication. He had destroyed the South's potential and psychology to wage war."[51] A pioneering use of psychological warfare and total war, the destruction wrought by Sherman's troops terrorized the South. Civilians whose territory and resources was being ravaged before their eyes grew so appalled at the conflict that their will to fight on dissipated, as Sherman had intended.[52] The march further crippled the Southern economy, incurring losses of approximately $100 million.[c][53] Lee's army in Virginia also lost vital access to food, for the railway lines connecting the state to the Deep South had been burnt. This "[knocked] the Confederate war effort to pieces."[54]

The campaign expedited the liberation of slaves in the South. By late 1864, the plantation system verged on total collapse;[55] the arrival of Union troops in Georgia inspirited slaves to flee the fields to freedom. Over 14,000 joined Sherman's troops with brisk enthusiasm as they passed near their native plantation.[56] Minister James M. Simms reminisces the dawn of December 22, the day after the fall of Savannah; the city's African-American residents, who had long been praying for the Confederacy's downfall, broke out in religious praises and jubilation—they paralleled their triumph to the Israelites' liberation from Egypt in Exodus.[57] While the slaves, now contrabands, succored the Union troops,[58] they were not welcomed with open arms. Sherman, in fact, discouraged them from attending the march due to shortage of food, as well as racial prejudice.[59] Once enlisted, contrabands were treated as second-class citizens and left famished and exhausted, to the point that administrative action was threatened against Sherman.[60] Still, the march proved a momentous milestone of emancipation; historian Edmund L. Drago writes: "These blacks considered themselves a chosen people whose day of deliverance was now at hand."[61]

Composition

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Original lyrics[62]



Bring the good old bugle boys! we'll sing another song,
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along;
Sing it as we used to sing it fifty thousand strong,
While we were marching through Georgia.

CHORUS
"Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the Jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!"
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.

 
How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound!
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found!
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground,
While we were marching through Georgia.

(CHORUS)

Yes, and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honor'd flag they had not seen for years;
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
While we were marching through Georgia.

(CHORUS)

"Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the coast!"
So the saucy rebels said, and 'twas a handsome boast,
Had they not forgotten, alas! to reckon with the host,
While we were marching through Georgia.

(CHORUS)

So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude—three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia.

(CHORUS)

Henry Clay Work

The song became widely popular with Union Army veterans after the American Civil War. The song, sung from the point of view of a Union soldier, tells of marching through Georgian territory,[63] freeing slaves, meeting Southern Unionist men glad to once again see the U.S. flag, and punishing the Confederacy for their starting the war.

Numerous writers correlate the song's passionate patriotism with Work's background in an abolitionist family.[64] Biographer Polly H. Carder notes that "Marching Through Georgia" shares the "exultant spirit" of "Kingdom Coming".[65]

The chorus underestimates the number of troops who participated in the march—rather than 50,000, roughly 60,000 took part.[66]

Musicologist Sigmund Spaeth remarks that beneath the song's jovial melody lurks an unabashed partisanship—it provides details that "rubbed Yankee salt into one of the sorest wounds of the Civil War."[67]

"Marching Through Georgia" sung by Harlan & Stanley in 1904.

Legacy

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Postbellum

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Gen. William T. Sherman, to whom "Marching Through Georgia" is dedicated.

"Marching Through Georgia" quickly cemented itself as a hallmark of the Civil War. Selling 500,000 copies of sheet music within 12 years,[68] it became one of the most successful wartime tunes and Work's most profitable hit up to that point. Music biographer David Ewen regards it as "the greatest of his war songs,"[69] and Carl S. Lowden deems it his very best work, in part owing to its "soul-stirring" production and longevity.[70] It became synonymous with the state of Georgia.[68]

Writer Edwin Tribble opines that Work's postbellum fame, the little he had, rested solely on the success of "Marching Through Georgia",[71] citing a letter he wrote to his long-time correspondent Susie Mitchell: "It is really surprising that I have excited so much curiosity and interest here, not only among romantic young women but among all classes. My connection with 'Marching Through Georgia' seems to be the cause."[72]

Sherman himself came to loathe "Marching Through Georgia" in part because of its ubiquity, being performed at every public function he attended. When he reviewed the national encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1890, the hundreds of bands present played the tune every time they passed him for an unbroken seven hours.[73] Eyewitnesses claim that "his patience collapsed and he declared that he would never again attend another encampment until every band in the United States had signed an agreement not to play 'Marching Though Georgia' in his presence."[74] He lived up to his promise. The song pursued Sherman even after his death, as it was played at his funeral.[75]

"Marching Through Georgia" does not share the same popularity in the nation's other half. Irwin Silber deems it the most despised Unionist song in the South owing to its evocations of a devastated Georgia at the hands of Sherman's frantic army.[76] Accordingly, Tom Dolan writes in The Jeffersonian: "Georgia will not forget [the march], nor will her Southern sisters be unmindful of the anguish of that relentless pillage."[77] Two incidents—both at a Democratic National Convention—exemplify Georgia's contempt for the song. In the 1908 convention, Georgia was one of the few states not to send its delegates to the eventual victor William Jennings Bryan;[78] the band insultingly played "Marching Through Georgia" to express the convention's disapproval.[79] A similar incident sparked in 1924. When tasked to play a fitting song for the Georgia delegation, the convention's band broke into Work's piece; music historian John Tasker Howard remarks: "[...] when the misguided leader, stronger on geography than history, swung into Marching Through Georgia, he was greeted by a silence that turned into hisses and boos noisier than the applause he had heard before."[80]

Military/Nationalist uses

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"Marching Through Georgia" is a staple of marching bands. While quintessentially American, it has been performed by armed forces across the world.[68] Japanese troops sang it as they entered Port Arthur at the Russo–Japanese War's onset;[81] it had previously been used by the local Salvation Army in the late 1880s.[82] In World War Two British troops stationed in India periodically chanted it.[81]

The song's melody has been adapted into numerous regional military and nationalist anthems. Shortly after the Advance on Pretoria of the Second Boer War, British soldiers commemorated their victory with "Marching on Pretoria".[83] Finnish civilians distraught at the conduct of the frigate Toivo's captain adopted it into a protest song, "Laiva Toivo, Oulu".[84] Charlie Oaks set the tune to "Marching Through Flanders", detailing the American intervention in Belgium during World War One.[85] The Princeton football fight song "Nassau! Nassau!" also borrowed the melody of Work's composition.[86] Its most notable adaptation is the controversial pro-Ulster hymn "Billy Boys",[87] with the chorus:

Hello, hello, we are the Billy boys,
Hello, hello, you'll know us by our noise,
We're up to our knees in Fenian blood,
Surrender or you'll die,
For we are the Brigton Derry boys.[88]

Political uses

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Both major candidates in the 1896 U.S. presidential election, William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan, featured songs sung to the tune of "Marching Through Georgia" in their campaign.[89] The piece is of Liberal significance in the United Kingdom, lending the melody of future prime minister David Lloyd George's song, "George and Gladstone", for his first parliamentary campaign,[90] as well as the Liberal Democrats' de facto anthem, "The Land".[91] It is a Georgist protest song calling for the equal distribution of land among the British public;[91] the chorus goes:

The land! the land! 'twas God who gave the land!
The land! the land! the ground on which we stand,
Why should we be beggars, with the ballot in our hand?
"God gave the land to the people!"[92]

It additionally forms the basis of "Paint 'Er Red", a commonplace pro-labor tune of the Industrial Workers of the World.[93]

Other uses

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Several films have employed Work's piece. A carpetbagger, in the epic Gone with the Wind (1939), chants its chorus while trying to steal Tara from Scarlett O'Hara.[94] The western Shane (1953) features Wilson briefly performing the song on a harmonica,[95] and in the western El Dorado (1966), Bull proclaims in response to being shot and asked to provide cover: "Well, just give me another gun and I'll play 'Marching Through Georgia'."[96] The alternate history novels Marching Through Georgia (1988) and Bring the Jubilee reference the lyrics in their titles.[97][98]

References

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Notes

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  1. ^ Sometimes spelled "Marching Thru' Georgia" or "Marching Thro Georgia".
  2. ^ The campaign ended on December 21, but the march to Savannah itself concluded on December 10.
  3. ^ Roughly equating to $1.9 billion as of 2024.

Citations

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  1. ^
  2. ^
  3. ^
  4. ^ a b quoted in Sadie & Tyrrell, New Grove Dictionary, 568
  5. ^
  6. ^
  7. ^
  8. ^ quoted in Silber, Songs of the Civil War, 7
  9. ^ a b
  10. ^ a b
  11. ^
  12. ^ a b
  13. ^
  14. ^
  15. ^
  16. ^
  17. ^
  18. ^ Hill, "The Mysterious Chord", 214
  19. ^
  20. ^
  21. ^
  22. ^
  23. ^
  24. ^ Silber, Songs of the Civil War, 16, 238
  25. ^ quoted in Sellers, "Economic Incidence of the Civil War", 179
  26. ^ quoted in Silber, Songs of the Civil War, 15
  27. ^
  28. ^ quoted in Eicher, The Longest Night, 768
  29. ^
  30. ^
  31. ^
  32. ^
  33. ^ quoted in Rhodes, "Sherman's March to the Sea", 466
  34. ^
  35. ^
  36. ^ a b c
  37. ^ quoted in Eicher, The Longest Night, 763
  38. ^
  39. ^ quoted in Sherman, Memoirs, 210
  40. ^
  41. ^
  42. ^
  43. ^
  44. ^
  45. ^ quoted in Rhodes, "Sherman's March to the Sea", 472
  46. ^ a b
  47. ^ Sellers, "Economic Incidence of the Civil War", 184
  48. ^ quoted in Sellers, "Economic Incidence of the Civil War", 180
  49. ^
  50. ^
  51. ^ quoted in Eicher, The Longest Night, 768
  52. ^
  53. ^
  54. ^
  55. ^ Drago, "How Sherman's March Affected the Slaves", 361–362
  56. ^
  57. ^
  58. ^ Drago, "How Sherman's March Affected the Slaves", 366, 368
  59. ^
  60. ^ Drago, "How Sherman's March Affected the Slaves", 370–372
  61. ^ quoted in Drago, "How Sherman's March Affected the Slaves", 364
  62. ^
  63. ^
  64. ^
  65. ^ quoted in Carder, George F. Root, 153
  66. ^ Eicher, The Longest Night, 763
  67. ^
  68. ^ a b c
  69. ^ quoted in Ewen, Popular American Composers, 188
  70. ^ quoted in Lowden, "Stories of Old Home Songs", 9
  71. ^ Tribble, "Marching Through Georgia", 423, 426
  72. ^
  73. ^
  74. ^ quoted in Tribble, "Marching Through Georgia", 428
  75. ^
  76. ^
  77. ^ quoted in Dolan, "News and Views", 13
  78. ^ Steinle, "Shall the People Rule?"
  79. ^
  80. ^
  81. ^ a b
  82. ^ Kimura, Soeda Azenbō, 129
  83. ^ Colquhoun, "Marching on Pretoria"
  84. ^ Kaukiainen, Laiva Toivo, 10–13
  85. ^ Oaks, "Marching Through Flanders"
  86. ^
  87. ^ BBC, "Irish FA Bans 'Billy Boys'"
  88. ^ BBC, "The Bitter Divide"
  89. ^ Harpine, "We Want Yer, McKinley", 78–80
  90. ^ Creiger, Bounder from Wales, 35–36
  91. ^ a b Whitehead, "God Gave the Land to the People"
  92. ^ Foner, American Labor Songs, 261
  93. ^ Green et al., Big Red Songbook, 156–157
  94. ^
  95. ^
  96. ^ IMDB, El Dorado
  97. ^ Stirling, Marching Through Georgia
  98. ^ Moore, Bring the Jubilee

Bibliography

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Books

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Studies and journals

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News articles

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Websites

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Songs

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General

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Recordings

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