REWIND: Civil War songs ... "I’m a Good Old Rebel," but assuredly not like this.

Within a block of my home, two separate windows sport confederate battle flags, and just this morning a Facebook friend posted a photo taken in downtown Louisville.

Photo credit: TL.

The flag issue received little play at this blog, primarily because all one can do as a civilized person is shake his head and lament the enduring perversity of bad taste. Experience hath shown that it's simply impossible to legislate good taste.

Following is a rerun of a post I wrote on July 17, 2011. It again seems topical today.

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Civil War songs: "I’m a Good Old Rebel," but assuredly not like this.

During the mid-1970’s, I spent way too much time pillaging the LP collection at the NA-FC Public Library, borrowing albums and committing them to cassette tape. These archival finds delightfully augmented my nascent musical tastes with a sheer breadth of material that would have been fiscally impossible for a high school student to manage on the open market.

Taxpayers of the time are duly thanked for the opportunity.

The Bicentennial year came in 1976, and at some point afterward, probably as late as 1978, I noticed the arrival of numerous attractively packaged LPs at the library: A 100-album set called The Recorded Anthology of American Music, produced by New World Records. The idea, as originally funded by a Rockefeller Foundation grant, was (and is) to trace the history of America through its music. As you can see by following the New World Records link, the effort continues more than three decades later.

As a side note, an almost completely intact, second set of the Anthology was placed at WNAS, New Albany High School’s radio station; I saw it there while substituting teaching during the early 1980’s. Seeing as the vast bulk of the original albums present classical works and formal composition, these had not been touched by discerning high school students. Only a handful of LPs were missing. Whether at the library or the high school, this set of albums was a mother lode for me.

Appropriately in this sesquicentennial Civil War year, I’ve been listening to Songs of the Civil War (New World Records 80202), with liner notes by Charles Hamm. It’s always been my favorite of them all. I've chosen just one of the songs to examine today: "I'm a Good Old Rebel," which to my mind illustrates the ultimate success of Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy -- which was still playing out on the ground when these liner notes were written, about to come to fruition under Ronald Reagan during the 1980's.

These days, it's the Republicans and Tea Partiers who are singing these songs. Isn't that plagiarism or something?

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I’m a Good Old Rebel
Many Southerners refused to be “reconstructed.” Some went west after the war, a few went abroad, and many of those who stayed in the South nursed a deep hatred for the North for the remainder of their lives while outwardly conforming to the realities of postwar life. These intense feelings brought about a political climate that unified the South against the Republican Party for almost a century. Rarely has hatred been so directly and convincingly expressed as in these lyrics.

A number of mysteries surround the present song. American War Songs claims that it was entered for copyright by A. C. Blackmar in Louisiana in 1864, yet the words were clearly written after the war. The earliest edition gives “J.R.T.” as the author, yet most historians of song agree that the tune was known as “Joe Bowers” and was by R. Bishop Buckley of Buckley’s Minstrels, the text by either Adelbert Volck or Major Innes Randolph, a “cultivated Southerner of letters. ”This edition (used for the present recording) appears to have been published in New Orleans in 1866 and bears an ironic dedication to “the Honorable Thad. Stevens.” The first musical phrase differs from the version printed in such anthologies as Songs of the Civil War and Singing Soldiers, though the remainder of the music is almost identical.

It may well be that most of these allegations are true, that the many contradictions in this story can be resolved. The tune may have been known in oral tradition before the Civil War: many of its melodic turns, and its use of a “gapped” or incomplete scale (the fourth note is absent, and the seventh is barely touched on), are characteristic of much Scotch-Irish traditional music. Buckley may have appropriated the tune, perhaps polishing it to make it conform more nearly to the tastes of minstrel-show audiences; a certain number of minstrel songs, including “Old Dan Tucker” and “De Boatman’s Dance,” show similar evidence of having been adapted from oral tradition tunes. Volck, or Innes, or both may have fitted a new topical text to a tune they knew either from folk tradition or the minstrel repertory.

This text was probably too extreme to be widely circulated in a printed version, even in the postwar South, and its chief popularity was as a song passed on by ear through several generations. It seems not to have appeared in print between the one edition in 1866 and the several versions taken down from oral tradition in the middle of the present century, and the differences between the nineteenth- and twentieth-century versions are not unusual for a song that has bounced back and forth between written and oral versions. On this album it is sung in an unaccompanied version.

Whatever the case, the song in all its versions is yet another demonstration of the intensity of feeling aroused by the war.

O I’m a good old Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am,
For this “Fair Land of Freedom”
I do not care AT ALL;
I’m glad I fit against it,
I only wish we’d won,
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I done.
I hates the Constitution,
This great Republic, too,
I hates the Freedman’s Buro,
In uniforms of blue;
I hates the nasty Eagle,
With all his braggs and fuss,
The lyin’, thievin’ Yankees,
I hates ‘em wuss and wuss.
I hates the Yankee nation
And everything they do,
I hates the Declaration
Of Independence, too;
I hates the glorious Union—
’Tis dripping with our blood—
I hates their striped banner,
I fit it all I could.

I followed old mas’ Robert
For four year near about,
Got wounded in three places
And starved at Pint Lookout.
I cotch the roomatism
A campin’ in the snow,
But I killed a chance o’Yankees,
I’d like to kill some mo’.

Three hundred thousand Yankees
Is still in Southern dust;
We got three hundred thousand
Before they conquered us;
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot,
I wish they was three million
Instead of what we got.

I can’t take up my musket
And fight ‘em now no more,
But I ain’t going to love ‘em,
Now that is sarten sure;
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am,
I won’t be reconstructed
And I don’t care a dam.

Okay, another one: “Beauregard’s Retreat from Shiloh.”

See the earlier post today: Civil War songs: "I’m a Good Old Rebel," but assuredly not like this.

Reader JF wrote: "I still treasure my copy, thank you. Doesn't Tony Randall merit a mention?"

He certainly does. The late actor Randall does the narration of “Beauregard’s Retreat from Shiloh,” and to reprise, it's from “Songs of the Civil War” (New World Records 80202), with liner notes by Charles Hamm; the series is The Recorded Anthology of American Music, produced by New World Records.

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Beauregard’s Retreat from Shiloh

The Battle of Shiloh took place when the Confederate army under General Albert Sidney Johnston attempted to prevent the North from occupying western Kentucky and seizing control of the Mississippi River, a vital communications line. In the early spring of 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant, moving up the Tennessee River with forty-five thousand Union troops to link up with General Don Carlos Buell and his twenty-five thousand men coming down from Nashville, camped around Shiloh Church, a country meeting house no more than twenty miles from the Confederate army camped at Corinth, Mississippi.

Johnston decided on a surprise attack before the two enemy forces linked up, and early on the morning of April 6 the Southerners struck, routing much of the Northern army. At first it seemed to be an overwhelming victory for the Rebels; but Grant finally succeeded in improvising a defense line, and Southern morale suffered when the popular General Johnston was mortally wounded. General Pierre G.T. Beauregard took command of the Confederate force. During the night, Buell arrived after a forced march with his men, and the second day was a reversal of the first, with the North recapturing all ground lost in the initial attack and forcing the enemy to withdraw to Corinth. The South had failed in its objective; the North had gained a morale-raising victory to offset defeats in Virginia and had found a winning general in Grant.

Casualties were high, some thirteen thousand for the North and ten thousand for the South. Most of the men on both sides were in their first major battle; one observer called it “a fight between mobs of armed boys.” Even in this most horrible of wars, Shiloh stands out as a nightmare. Most of the wounded lay all night on the battlefield unattended, drenched by a cold rain, crying for help or death. At the end of the second day, the Confederate wounded were hauled twenty miles over rough roads in wagons without springs to inadequate medical care in Corinth.

A Northern nurse, one of the first to reach the wounded on the battlefield, wrote, “The foul air from this mass of human beings at first made me giddy and sick. When we give the men anything, we kneel in blood and water. ”There was slaughter and heroism and panic; when Union General William Nelson arrived with his men during the first day’s battle, he found “cowering under the river bank...from 7,000 to 10,000 men frantic with fright and demoralized.”

The anonymously composed (with “a running accompaniment by Skedaddles”) Beauregard’s Retreat from Shiloh mostly ignores these human aspects of the battle in favor of objective, if caustically humorous, narration of the chief military events. It is an interesting mixture of two nineteenth- century types of composition.

As a battle piece, it continues a tradition dating back to the late eighteenth century. One of the most widely published piano pieces in America at the turn of the century and into the nineteenth was The Battle of Prague by the Czech-English composer Franz Kotzwara, who died in England in 1791. A descriptive, episodic work for piano, it features trumpet calls, patriotic airs, low bass rumbles in imitation of cannon fire, spirited passages for marching and attacking armies; each section bears a title or a description of what aspect of the battle is depicted in those measures.

James Hewitt wrote a similar Battle of Trenton in 1797, and battle pieces continued to be written and played well into the nineteenth century. An unusual feature of Beauregard’s Retreat is that in addition to descriptive comments for each section there is a narrative to be recited while the music is being played. It is thus also a melodrama, the technical term for vocal recitation against music.

Melodrama was sometimes used to good effect by nineteenth-century composers of art music (in Weber’s opera Der Freischíütz and Berlioz’ monodrama, Lelio, for example). And scattered throughout the nineteenth- century popular repertory are pieces for parlor recitation with piano accompaniment, which made it possible for people with training in dramatics or elocution, but no ability in music, to take part in home entertainment. Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden is a survival of melodrama as late as the turn of the century.

(Beauregard’s March.) Beauregard marches from his entrenchments at Corinth. Beauregard expects to reach our lines in time to attack our Army on Saturday, April 5th, 1862. Beauregard’s men, however, are unused to marching. A severe rain storm, on the night of the 4th, drenches his troops in bivouac. Beauregard reaches the intersection of the roads from Pittsburgh—and Hamburg on Saturday evening.

(The Assembly.Word of Command! The Assembly call of the National Troops. To Arms! Drums! Response of the enemy in the distance. Drums!) (Prayer of the National Soldiers.) Previous to the fight, the National Troops offer up an Invocation to the God of Hosts for strength to defend the right, and scatter the enemies of the Union. (Forward Skirmishers by the right flank.)

(The Attack!) Beauregard drives in our pickets. Beauregard advances on the division of General Prentiss. The regiments of Prentiss’ division are taken prisoners. Beauregard falls on our advance lines. Our entire advanced lines, under Generals Sherman and McClernand, are driven in. Generals W. H. L. Wallace and Hurlburt gallantly defend the reserve line for nearly six hours. General Wallace is mortally wounded, and Beauregard’s forces occupy nearly all our camps. General Grant takes command. A. S. Johnston, the rebel commander, is killed. Beauregard comes within range of our gunboats. The Tyler and Lexington belch forth thunders with terrible effect while Colonel Webster places our guns in the best possible position for our protection. The National
troops perceive the advance guard of General Buell under General Nelson.The 6th Ohio cross the Tennessee and form in line of battle. Beauregard is told of the arrival of Generals Buell’s and Lew Wallace’s* divisions. Beauregard withdraws his forces for the night. During the night the fire from our gunboats compels Beauregard to fall back. Beauregard’s forces are dispirited. Our brave troops sleep on their arms amid the cries and groans of the wounded. The morning dawns, Monday, April 7th. Beauregard is attacked by Generals Nelson and Lew Wallace. Beauregard has drawn back, and we have resumed the positions we occupied on Sunday morning. Beauregard in full retreat to Corinth. Our cavalry pursue the retreating columns of the enemy until night prevents further progress. Beauregard enters Corinth with his beaten troops.

(Recall of Cavalry.) At the sound of the Recall, our gallant Cavalry give up the pursuit of Beauregard’s scattered forces. On nearing their former position at Shiloh, our Cavalry hear the Bands playing our National Melodies previous to the Tattoo. Tattoo in the distance. At Tattoo all lights and fires are extinguished and the men retire to their tents.

(Previous to retiring to their Tents, the troops sing Jefferson Davis’ Requiem to the tune of the New Dixie.)

(The New Dixie.) Beauregard and Jeff Davis having “died in the last ditch” are carried down the stream until they reach the ford of a dark river, where they make the acquaintance of Old Charon, an ancient Ferryman, from whom they beg a cup of the waters of Lethe to enable them to drown the remembrance of their inordinate pride and ambition. Charon—acting under instructions —declines their request, but rows them gently over the Styx and conducts them to his majesty King Pluto in whose “Old Dominion” it is hoped they will ever “be let alone” and never be tormented by the presence of a Hessian, Lincolnite, or Yankee. At all events, this being the place farthest removed from unity, is the proper one for the establishment of a Kingdom in which the Yankees leave Jeff and Co. alone in their glory.

*The author of Ben-Hur.

Note: The ability to recite poetry and dramatic texts effectively was a desirable social skill among educated people in mid-nineteenth century America. Young men and women often took instruction in elocution, learning proper diction, posture, and dramatic poses for various types of texts. Just as amateur singing reflected the styles of famous artists, so recitations given as part of home entertainment mirrored the styles of actors and orators of the time. By our standards, this style was stilted, unrealistic, often overly melodramatic.

Civil War songs: "I’m a Good Old Rebel," but assuredly not like this.

During the mid-1970’s, I spent way too much time pillaging the LP collection at the NA-FC Public Library, borrowing albums and committing them to cassette tape. These archival finds delightfully augmented my nascent musical tastes with a sheer breadth of material that would have been fiscally impossible for a high school student to manage on the open market.

Taxpayers of the time are duly thanked for the opportunity.

The Bicentennial year came in 1976, and at some point afterward, probably as late as 1978, I noticed the arrival of numerous attractively packaged LPs at the library: A 100-album set called The Recorded Anthology of American Music, produced by New World Records. The idea, as originally funded by a Rockefeller Foundation grant, was (and is) to trace the history of America through its music. As you can see by following the New World Records link, the effort continues more than three decades later.

As a side note, an almost completely intact, second set of the Anthology was placed at WNAS, New Albany High School’s radio station; I saw it there while substituting teaching during the early 1980’s. Seeing as the vast bulk of the original albums present classical works and formal composition, these had not been touched by discerning high school students. Only a handful of LPs were missing. Whether at the library or the high school, this set of albums was a mother lode for me.

Appropriately in this sesquicentennial Civil War year, I’ve been listening to Songs of the Civil War (New World Records 80202), with liner notes by Charles Hamm. It’s always been my favorite of them all. I've chosen just one of the songs to examine today: "I'm a Good Old Rebel," which to my mind illustrates the ultimate success of Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy -- which was still playing out on the ground when these liner notes were written, about to come to fruition under Ronald Reagan during the 1980's.

These days, it's the Republicans and Tea Partiers who are singing these songs. Isn't that plagiarism or something?

---

I’m a Good Old Rebel

Many Southerners refused to be “reconstructed.” Some went west after the war, a few went abroad, and many of those who stayed in the South nursed a deep hatred for the North for the remainder of their lives while outwardly conforming to the realities of postwar life. These intense feelings brought about a political climate that unified the South against the Republican Party for almost a century. Rarely has hatred been so directly and convincingly expressed as in these lyrics.

A number of mysteries surround the present song. American War Songs claims that it was entered for copyright by A. C. Blackmar in Louisiana in 1864, yet the words were clearly written after the war. The earliest edition gives “J.R.T.” as the author, yet most historians of song agree that the tune was known as “Joe Bowers” and was by R. Bishop Buckley of Buckley’s Minstrels, the text by either Adelbert Volck or Major Innes Randolph, a “cultivated Southerner of letters. ”This edition (used for the present recording) appears to have been published in New Orleans in 1866 and bears an ironic dedication to “the Honorable Thad. Stevens.” The first musical phrase differs from the version printed in such anthologies as Songs of the Civil War and Singing Soldiers, though the remainder of the music is almost identical.

It may well be that most of these allegations are true, that the many contradictions in this story can be resolved. The tune may have been known in oral tradition before the Civil War: many of its melodic turns, and its use of a “gapped” or incomplete scale (the fourth note is absent, and the seventh is barely touched on), are characteristic of much Scotch-Irish traditional music. Buckley may have appropriated the tune, perhaps polishing it to make it conform more nearly to the tastes of minstrel-show audiences; a certain number of minstrel songs, including “Old Dan Tucker” and “De Boatman’s Dance,” show similar evidence of having been adapted from oral tradition tunes. Volck, or Innes, or both may have fitted a new topical text to a tune they knew either from folk tradition or the minstrel repertory.

This text was probably too extreme to be widely circulated in a printed version, even in the postwar South, and its chief popularity was as a song passed on by ear through several generations. It seems not to have appeared in print between the one edition in 1866 and the several versions taken down from oral tradition in the middle of the present century, and the differences between the nineteenth- and twentieth-century versions are not unusual for a song that has bounced back and forth between written and oral versions. On this album it is sung in an unaccompanied version.

Whatever the case, the song in all its versions is yet another demonstration of the intensity of feeling aroused by the war.

O I’m a good old Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am,
For this “Fair Land of Freedom”
I do not care AT ALL;
I’m glad I fit against it,
I only wish we’d won,
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I done.

I hates the Constitution,
This great Republic, too,
I hates the Freedman’s Buro,
In uniforms of blue;
I hates the nasty Eagle,
With all his braggs and fuss,
The lyin’, thievin’ Yankees,
I hates ‘em wuss and wuss.

I hates the Yankee nation
And everything they do,
I hates the Declaration
Of Independence, too;
I hates the glorious Union—
’Tis dripping with our blood—
I hates their striped banner,
I fit it all I could.

I followed old mas’ Robert
For four year near about,
Got wounded in three places
And starved at Pint Lookout.
I cotch the roomatism
A campin’ in the snow,
But I killed a chance o’Yankees,
I’d like to kill some mo’.

Three hundred thousand Yankees
Is still in Southern dust;
We got three hundred thousand
Before they conquered us;
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot,
I wish they was three million
Instead of what we got.

I can’t take up my musket
And fight ‘em now no more,
But I ain’t going to love ‘em,
Now that is sarten sure;
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am,
I won’t be reconstructed
And I don’t care a dam.