![]() Suffice it to say, George Frederick Root, the Civil War’s most successful songwriter, took inspiration from Abraham Lincoln’s call for 300,000 volunteers in the summer of 1862 and the resulting tune instantly became a major hit in the Union armies and on the home-front. I wrote an article for the New York Times Disunion blog about the original “Battle Cry” back in 2012, so I won’t recount the song’s history here. So, let’s compare the two and see what we find. A lot of people wrote their own versions of the song, but the most popular contrafactum (as musicologists call songs with the same melody but different lyrics) was probably a Confederate version by Hermann L. Thus, although I’ve already blogged about three Root & Cady songs ( here, here, and here), I thought it would be fun to write a little about the firm’s biggest hit, “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” But I think I’ll do it with a twist. Those of you who read Battle Hymns probably picked up on my fondness for Root & Cady, since the firm embodied my central idea of Civil War Americans using popular music to reflect and influence public opinion. In intellectual terms, it means I’m starting to think about Civil war music more deeply-something I haven’t really done since I wrote my book a few years ago. In practical terms, this means I’m blogging a little less, at least for now. It will likely appear in the fall edition of Chicago History and I’ll probably expand it into a longer piece down the road. I’m currently neck-deep in an article on the mid-19th Century Chicago music publishing firm, Root & Cady. “The Battle-Cry of Freedom.” Music by Hermann L. “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” Written by George Frederick Root.
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