The Bonnie Blue Flag: A Song History

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"The Bonnie Blue Flag" was written in 1861 by Harry Macarthy (1834–1888), a touring variety performer who billed himself as "the Arkansas Comedian," as a song in praise of the newly formed Confederacy.[1][2][3] Its title refers to a blue banner with a single white star, a design closely resembling the flag of the short-lived Republic of West Florida of 1810.[2][4] When Mississippi seceded on January 9, 1861, the star-on-blue emblem was taken into the state's new flag, and the Mississippi Encyclopedia credits Macarthy's song with making the “Bonnie Blue” famous.[5] Accounts of the premiere differ in the sources consulted here: the American Battlefield Trust places it at a concert in Jackson, Mississippi, in the spring of 1861, with a later performance that September at the New Orleans Academy of Music for soldiers bound for Virginia, while New Orleans Historical describes the song's debut during Macarthy's New Orleans engagement, which began in August 1861.[1][2] Its verses trace the order in which the Southern states seceded.[1]

Wood engraving of portrait heads of the Mississippi congressional delegation of 1861

Winslow Homer, “The Seceding Mississippi Delegation in Congress,” wood engraving from Harper’s Weekly, 1861. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The melody is usually identified as "The Irish Jaunting Car," an Irish song, although the Traditional Tune Archive notes that not every editor accepts this and cites Paul Wells's view that "The Wearing of the Green" may be the closer Irish source.[1][6][7] The New Orleans firm of A. E. Blackmar & Bro. published the song in six editions between 1861 and 1864, plus three further arrangements; an 1861 printing under the firm's Augusta, Georgia, imprint is dedicated to Albert G. Pike, described on it as a poet and lawyer of Arkansas.[1][3] The song was widely sung by Confederate soldiers and civilians.[1] After Union forces occupied New Orleans in May 1862, local newspapers recorded arrests of men and women for singing it, and General Benjamin Butler is said to have had Blackmar arrested and the Confederate material in his shop destroyed, though both sources give this only as report, not confirmed fact.[1][6] In the North, the Philadelphia publisher M. H. Frank issued an answer song that rewrote the chorus from the Union side.[6]

The song outlived the war as a political symbol. New Orleans Historical notes that it was revived in early twentieth-century Lost Cause commemorations and was taken up by opponents of integration during the civil rights era.[6] It also passed into instrumental tradition: the folklorist Samuel Bayard found it a favorite in southwestern Pennsylvania, and old-time recordings include versions by Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers and by the North Carolina banjo player Marvin Gaster, under another title.[7] Elizabeth Knight and the Harvesters sang it on the 1960 Folkways album Songs of the Civil War.[8]

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Sources

  1. American Battlefield Trust: "Civil War Music: The Bonnie Blue Flag".
  2. New Orleans Historical: "Harry Macarthy and the Academy of Music".
  3. Johns Hopkins University, Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection: "The Bonnie Blue Flag. A Southern Patriotic Song.".
  4. Wikipedia: "Bonnie Blue flag".
  5. Mississippi Encyclopedia: "Flag, Mississippi State".
  6. New Orleans Historical: "‘Bonnie Blue Flag:’ The Most Dangerous Song of the Civil War".
  7. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Bonnie Blue Flag (The)".
  8. Smithsonian Folkways: "Bonnie Blue Flag" (Elizabeth Knight with the Harvesters, Songs of the Civil War).