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Marching Through Georgia

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For the S. M. Stirling novel, see Marching Through Georgia (novel).

"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.

The 1865 sheet music cover by S. Brainard Sons.
The composer Henry Clay Work in a W. S. B. Matthews engraving.

The popular music firm Root & Cady published the song in January 1865 to widespread success. One of few Civil War songs that withstood the war's end, "Marching Through Georgia" cemented a place in veteran reunions and marching parades. Today, it is nigh synonymous with the state of Georgia, even though residents look upon it with contempt for evoking memories of Sherman's annihilative campaign. 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 a slew of partisan hymns such as "The Land" and "Billy Boys". Beyond the United States, troops from all over the world have adopted it as a wartime 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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Henry Clay Work was a printer by trade, operating in Chicago ever since 1855. However, his true interest rested in songwriting, which he had cultivated a deep passion for as a child. After years of submitting poems to local newspapers, he published a complete song in 1853, "We Are Coming, Sister Mary".

The March to the Sea

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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.

Toward the end of 1864, the fourth year of the American Civil War, few confrontations on the battlefield arose owing to the presidential election between President Abraham Lincoln and Gen. George B. McClellan. A Union victory still seemed distant but as the campaign progressed, it grew likelier—Atlanta had been captured and Gen. Philip Sheridan had triumphed in the Shenandoah Valley.[1] At the fall of Atlanta, the mood of Southerners became characterized by "unrealistic optimism" and, to an extent, defeatism, such that President Jefferson Davis claimed: "There are no vital points on which the continued existence of the Confederacy depends […]"[2]

The March to the Sea commenced on November 15 with 62,000 troops dubbed "bummers" split into two flanks, the right commanded by Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard comprising the 15th and 17th Corps and the left under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum comprising the 14th and 20th Corps; 5,000 of the troops belonged to an attached cavalry division led by Gen. Hugh J. Kilpatrick. They bore twenty days' worth of rations and had to partially live off foodstuffs from Georgian plantations. Before departing Atlanta (which had been in ruins), as well as during the march, they destroyed all communication lines, inadvertently including those with the Union government. After Gen. John Bell Hood left for Tennessee, Sherman's army would only face a meager Confederate resistance of 13,000 troops at any given point during the advance. Author David J. Eicher likens Sherman's strategy to Grant's Vicksburg campaign in its "radical nature," more so than the latter. His troops would, to some limit, "forage liberally on the country."

Composition

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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, freeing slaves, meeting Southern Unionist men glad to once again see the U.S. flag, and punishing the Confederacy for their starting the war.

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

Root & Cady published the song in January 1865, roughly a month after the March to the Sea ended.[3]

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. “Sherman’s dashing Yankee boys
Will never reach the coast!”
So the saucy rebels said
And ’twas a handsome boast
Had they not forgot, alas
To reckon with the host
While we were marching through Georgia

5. 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

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,[4] 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,"[5] and Carl S. Lowden deems it his very best work, in part owing to its "soul-stirring" production and longevity.[6] It became synonymous with the state of Georgia.[4]

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 and fife and drum corps present played the tune every time they passed him for an unbroken seven hours.[7] 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."[8] He lived up to his promise. The song pursued Sherman even beyond his death, as it was played at his funeral.[9]

"Marching Through Georgia" does not share the same popularity in the nation's other half. Journalist 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.[10] 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."[11] 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;[12] the band insultingly played "Marching Through Georgia" to express the convention's disapproval.[13] 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."[14]

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.[4] Japanese troops sang it as they entered Port Arthur at the Russo–Japanese War's onset;[15] it had previously been used by the local Salvation Army in the late 1880s.[16] In World War Two British troops stationed in India periodically chanted it.[15]

The song's melody was 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".[17] Finnish civilians distraught at the conduct of the frigate Toivo's captain adopted it into a protest song, "Laiva Toivo, Oulu".[18] Charlie Oaks set the tune to "Marching Through Flanders", detailing the American intervention in Belgium during World War One.[19] The Irish nationalist song "Come In" also borrowed the melody of Work's composition.[20] Its most notable adaptation is the controversial pro-Ulster hymn "Billy Boys",[21] 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.[22]

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.[23] 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,[24] as well as the Liberal Democrats' de facto anthem, "The Land".[25] It is a Georgist protest song calling for the equal distribution of land among the British public;[25] 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!"[26]

It additionally forms the basis of "Paint 'Er Red", a commonplace unionist tune of the Industrial Workers of the World.[27]

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.[28] The western Shane (1953) features Wilson briefly performing the song on a harmonica,[29] 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'."[30] The alternate history novels Marching Through Georgia (1988) and Bring the Jubilee reference the lyrics in their titles.[31][32]

References

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Notes

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  1. ^ Sometimes spelled "Marching Thru' Georgia" or "Marching Thro Georgia".

Citations

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  1. ^
  2. ^
  3. ^ Erbsen, Rousing Songs, 51
  4. ^ a b c
  5. ^ quoted in Ewen, Popular American Composers, 188
  6. ^ quoted in Lowden, "Stories of Old Home Songs", 9
  7. ^
  8. ^ quoted in Tribble, "Marching Through Georgia", 428
  9. ^
  10. ^
  11. ^ quoted in Dolan, "News and Views", 13
  12. ^ Steinle, "Shall the People Rule?"
  13. ^
  14. ^
  15. ^ a b
  16. ^ Kimura, Soeda Azenbō, 129
  17. ^ Colquhoun, "Marching on Pretoria"
  18. ^ Kaukiainen, Laiva Toivo, 10–13
  19. ^ Oaks, "Marching Through Flanders"
  20. ^ Irish Rovers, "Come In"
  21. ^ BBC, "Irish FA Bans 'Billy Boys'"
  22. ^ BBC, "The Bitter Divide"
  23. ^ Harpine, "We Want Yer, McKinley", 78–80
  24. ^ Creiger, Bounder from Wales, 35–36
  25. ^ a b Whitehead, "God Gave the Land to the People"
  26. ^ Foner, American Labor Songs, 261
  27. ^ Green et al., Big Red Songbook, 156–157
  28. ^
  29. ^
  30. ^ IMDB, El Dorado
  31. ^ Stirling, Marching Through Georgia
  32. ^ 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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Miscellaneous

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Film segments

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Songs

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Websites

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  • Ross, Kelley L. (2004). "Marching Through Georgia". I am a Union Man. Archived from the original on August 26, 2014. Retrieved August 26, 2014.
  • Marching Through Georgia sheet music
  • Marching Through Georgia MIDI
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