Tenting On The Old Campground: A Song History

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Walter Kittredge, a concert singer from Merrimack, New Hampshire, who had long performed with the Hutchinson Family Singers, wrote both words and music of “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground” (also known as “Tenting Tonight”) while expecting to be called up for Union service; sources differ on whether this was in 1862 or 1863.[1][2][3] In the end he was not fit to serve, which the Ballad Index attributes to the lingering effects of rheumatic fever.[2] At least one Boston publisher turned the song down at first, but Kittredge got the Hutchinsons to add it to their programs, and it caught on at their well-attended torchlight rallies at High Rock in Lynn, Massachusetts.[3][2] Oliver Ditson & Co. of Boston issued the sheet music in 1864, its title page crediting the adaptation to the Hutchinson Family, Tribe of Asa, a branch of the famous singing family known for songs supporting abolition, temperance and women’s rights.[4][5]

1862 photograph of Union soldiers seated in front of their canvas tents

Mathew B. Brady, Private James P. Bonnet and members of the 22nd New York State Militia in their tent camp near Harper’s Ferry, photograph, 1862. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

Once in print, the song moved quickly, with about ten thousand copies sold within its first few months, though sources differ on whether that took two months or three.[3][1] The historian Bruce Catton, as summarized by the Ballad Index, placed it just behind “When This Cruel War Is Over” among the best-loved songs of the war years.[2] After the war it became a fixture at reunions and encampments of the Grand Army of the Republic; Kittredge was still singing it at a GAR encampment in Washington in 1892, and his royalties from it in 1896 were reportedly the highest of any year to that point.[3][1] Early recordings, from about 1898 into the 1920s, came from the Haydn Quartet, the Peerless Quartet and Frank C. Stanley, among others, and Pete Seeger later recorded it as well.[2]

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Sources

  1. New Hampshire Union Leader (Aurore Eaton): "Walter Kittredge’s legacy: ‘Tenting on the Old Camp Ground’".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Tenting Tonight".
  3. New World Records (Charles Hamm): "Songs of the Civil War" (liner notes, NW 80202).
  4. Johns Hopkins University, Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection: "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground".
  5. Smithsonian National Museum of American History: "Tenting on the Old Campground".