Battle Cry Of Freedom: A Song History

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George F. Root wrote both words and music of “The Battle Cry of Freedom” in July 1862, prompted by President Lincoln’s call that summer for 300,000 volunteers.[1] In Root’s own later account, the news of the call reached him one afternoon as he rested at his brother’s house; text and tune took shape together in his head, and he completed the song by the next morning.[2] The Chicago firm of Root & Cady published the sheet music, whose cover credits Frank and Jules Lumbard with first singing it in Chicago’s Court House Square.[3] It was performed at a large war rally in late July 1862.[1]

Period photograph of a Union sergeant standing in the open and holding his regiment’s flag

Sergeant Alex Rogers with battle flag, Eighty-third Pennsylvania Volunteers, albumen print, about 1863. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The song spread fast. Root gave it two different sets of verses, one urging civilians to join up and one meant for men already fighting, and the troops carried it with them through camp life, long marches and combat; one National Park Service guide calls it “the most effective rallying song of the North.”[4] Demand for the sheet music outran fourteen presses, and estimates of total sales run from half a million to about three-quarters of a million copies.[1][5] It is also sometimes known as “Rally Round the Flag.”[5] Historian Gary Gallagher notes that for many Northern listeners the “freedom” of the title meant chiefly the Union and the liberties of free white laborers rather than emancipation, though the lyrics also look toward an end to slavery.[2][6] By 1864 new campaign words for Lincoln’s reelection were being set to its tune.[7]

The melody crossed the lines as well. Hermann L. Schreiner adapted Root’s tune, with some rhythmic changes, to Confederate words by William H. Barnes,[1][8] and a Schreiner edition of this Southern “Battle Cry of Freedom” is dated 1864.[9] The tune has continued to attract new texts: more than a century later, Billy Bragg set his song “There Is Power in a Union” to Root’s melody.[5]

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Sources

  1. American Battlefield Trust: "Civil War Music: The Battle Cry of Freedom".
  2. HistoryNet (Gary W. Gallagher): "In Patriotic Melodies in the Civil War North, 'Freedom' Wasn't Necessarily a Cry for African-American Emancipation".
  3. University of Illinois Library Digital Collections: "Battle-Cry of Freedom" (sheet music cover, Root & Cady, 1862).
  4. National Park Service, Vicksburg NMP: "Singing Soldiers: The Battle Cry of Freedom - Northern Version".
  5. Princeton University Library, Graphic Arts Collection: "The Battle Cry of Freedom".
  6. Teaching American History: "Freedom Songs from North and South".
  7. President Lincoln's Cottage: "1864 Lincoln Campaign Songster".
  8. National Park Service, Vicksburg NMP: "Singing Soldiers: Battle Cry of Freedom - Southern Version".
  9. Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University: "[The] Battle Cry of Freedom" by Hermann L. Schreiner, William H. Barnes.