Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: wysiwyg
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 03:53 PM

Hoist Up the Flag for Abraham: Images and Songs of the 1864 Campaign.

Try it!

~S~

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: raredance
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 10:13 PM

Interesting site. One puzzlement. The web site lists Robert Morris as author of We Are Coming Father Abraham, but at least 4 authors of books of Civil War era songs that I have say the poet was John Sloan Gibbons. I have no way to determine which is correct. Maybe Morris gets credit for changing the 300,000 in the original to 600,000.

rich r

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 10:55 PM

Traditional Ballad Index says the poem is by James Sloan Gibbons, NY Evening Post, 1862. It goes on to say at least eight musical arrangements came out, the most popular by L. O. Emerson. The American Memory website illustrates the sheet music or broadsides for a number of versions including those of other contenders, Warden, Morris and Bryant among them, and African-American versions as well.
Take your pick of authors for the music you prefer, but Gibbons has the best claim for the original words.

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: Art Thieme
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 12:49 AM

great stuff

THANKS

Art

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 04:30 AM

See also this site:

"We'll Sing to Abe Our Song!": Sheet Music about Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Civil War from the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana (Library of Congress)

The most famous--if not most popular--composition of "We Are Coming", I think, is by Stephen Foster.

We Are Coming Father Abraam, 300,000 More (note the spelling as "Abraam"; 1862; Music Composed by Stephen C. Foster). Original sheet music is HERE too. MIDI & lyrics are HERE and at other Foster sites.

As for the author of the poem:

"In 1862, no less than sixteen different composers, among them Stephen Foster, wrote musical settings for John Sloan Gibbon's poem 'We Are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand More.' Gibbons, a financial expert by profession and a Quaker by religion, had been moved to write the poem by Lincoln's call in July 1862 for three hundred thousand more troops after McClellan's disastrous failure in the Peninsular Campaign. The poem was anonymously published in the New Yok Evening Post (July 16, 1862), and because the author was not identified, it was generally assumed that it had been written by the editor of the Evening Post, William Cullen Bryant, himself a distinguished poet; a number of the composers credited Bryant with the text." (Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Music for Patriots, Politicians, and Presidents, Macmillan, 1975, p. 364)

Another title is used by this edition:

Three Hundred Thousand More! (1862; Music by G.R. Poulton)

~Masato

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 06:18 AM

Presidential campaign song book & CD:

Irwin Silber, ed., Songs America Voted BY (Stackpole Books, 1971; with music & chords)

Presidential Campaign Songs: 1789 - 1996 (Smithsonian Folkways) sung by Oscar Brand.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: raredance
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 09:35 PM

Keith and Rusty McNeil have recorded this on their collection of "Civil War Songs". They use the Luther Orland Emmerson tune and add that it was also sung to "Wearing of the Green".

To follow up on the JS Gibbons tale, the following is taken from "American War Songs" published in1925 by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.

"James Sloan Gibbons moved to New York city, where he became prominent in the anti-slavery movement, bineg a close friend of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, the Grimke sisters and other leasders of those days. He married Abby Hopper, a daughter of Isaac T Hopper, the Quaker philanthropist, and thier home became a meeting place for all who desired to uplift the distressed.

The poem was written in response to President Lincoln's call, in 1862, for three hundred thousand men. It was written at white heat and published anonymously in the New York Evening Post. A full acount of its origin and the accompanying circumstances was published some years ago in Scribner's Magazine. The poem mad an immediate and profound impression, was set to music and was sung all over the country by thousands of men replying to the President's call.

In the draft riots of 1863, when New York was for some days under mob rule, Mr Gibbons's well-known anti-slavery principles made him a marked man for the hatred of the rioters. A smear of tar upon his front door was the warning of what he might expect. A few hours later the mob surged into his house, which they completely sacked, destroying everything which could not be carried away. Mr Gibbons himself, learning what was going on, mingled with the crown, and, unrecognized, witnessed the pillaging and ruin of his cherished home. His wife and eldest daughter were at this time nursing in the army hospitals in the South, but two other daughters had only time to escape by a trap-door across the neighboring roofs to a friendly house around a corner, where they were met by thier friend, Joseph H Choate, who conveyed them to a place of safety."

Irwin Silber in "Songs of the Civil War" (1960, Columbia Univ. Press) has the song with the music to Emmerson's tune. Paul Glass and Louis Singer in "Singing Soldiers, The Spirit of the Sixties" (1968 Grosset & Dunlop) have the song with the Wearing of the Green tune written by Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, the Band Master of the Union Army.

rich r

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 11:05 PM

Thanks, rich r. The photo of the original manuscript is given in American War Songs (between pp. 114 and 115), without title, the spelling being "Father Abraham".

'Gibbon's poem was published under the title 'Three Hundred Thousand More' in the New York Evening Post, July 16, 1862, and was widely reprinted. Its patriotic appeal quickly caught the imagination of a number of composers, including Foster. Musical settings published in 1862 include those by Nathan Barker (Cincinnati: A.C. Peters & Bros.), William B. Bradbury (New York: Firth, Pond & Co.), Professor A[ugustus?] Cull (New York: Horace Waters), L.O. Emerson (Boston: Oliver Ditson), J.A. Getz (Cleveland: Brainard & Co.; the same arrangemnt appeared with attribution to "A Volunteer"), P.S. Gilmore (Boston: Russell & Patee), A.B. Irving (Chicago: H.M. Higgins), and "The Wife of a Volunteer" (Cincinnati: John Church).' (Steven Saunders and Deane L. Root, The Music of Stephen C. Foster: A Critical Edition, Vol. 2 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, p. 436).

~Masato

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 11:33 PM

Should have been 'Gibbons's poem'.

Subject: ADD: We Are Coming, Father Abraham
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 May 05 - 04:53 AM

Lincoln/NET has a wide variety of song lyrics from Lincoln's era. Here is a text for "We Are Coming, Father Abraham." Tune is "Wearing of the Green."
-Joe Offer-

---

We are coming Father Abraam, Three Hundred Thousand More.

Gilmore, P.S. Boston: Russell & Patee, 1862.
Permission: University of Chicago.

Music composed by P.S. Gilmore.

We are coming, Father Abraam,three hundred thousand more,
From Mississippi's winding stream and from New England's shore;
We leave our plows and workshops, our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear;
We dare not look behind us, but steadfastly before,
We are coming, Father Abraam, three hundred thousand more.

Chorus [Four part harmony]
We are coming, we are coming, our Union to restore;
We are coming Father Abraam, with three hundred thousand more.

If you look across the hilltops that meet the northern sky,
Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry;
And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside,
And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride;
And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour,
We are coming, Father Abraam, three hundred thousand more.

Chorus.

If you look all up our valleys, where the growing harvests shine,
You may see our sturdy farmer - boys fast forming into line;
And children from their mothers' knees are pulling at the weeds,
And learning how to reap and sow, against their country's needs;
And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door,
We are coming, Father Abraam, three hundred thousand more.

Chorus.

You have called us, and we're coming, by Richmond's bloody tide,
To lay us down for freedom's sake, our brother's bones beside;
Or from foul treason's savage group to wrench the murderous blade,
And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade;
Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before,
We are coming, Father Abraam, three hundred thousand more.

Chorus.

One source said the "Abraam" was intentional, but I can't remember why.

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 May 05 - 07:33 PM

Terrific!

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 May 05 - 10:29 PM

Was Lincoln and Liberty Too not from the 1864 campaign?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 May 05 - 11:07 PM

"We'll Sing to Abe Our Song," the large collection of sheet music and song sheets about Lincoln, Emancipation and the Civil War at American Memory.
We'll Sing to Abe
Linked in other threads about Civil War Songs, but worth repeating here.

"We Are Coming Father Abra'am, Six Hundred Thousand More," composed and arr. by Prof. A. Cull, Lyrics by Robert Morris, sheet music, pub. Horace Waters (Oliver Ditson in Boston), 1862, is in the collection (see notes by Masato, above).
A note on the sheet music acknowledges that the words were published in the New York Evening Post (words James Sloan Gibbons (Robert Morris).

Sheet music to the version posted by Joe (c. 1862) also is found in the collection. The apostrophe in Abra'am has been left out.

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 May 05 - 11:25 PM

A midi of Emerson's tune here: Father Abra'am

Excellent Midi of Stephen Foster's tune, along with midis and lyrics for all Foster songs, here (a rouser!):
We Are Coming

Subject: RE: Abe Lincoln's Musical Campaign
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 May 05 - 11:44 PM

"Lincoln and Liberty (too)" attributed to Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., an abolitionist, is not in American Memory.
The phrase is said to be from the 1860 campaign, but I can't verify. Music is Rosin the Beau. Sandburg says it is a ditty from the campaign of 1860.
I would like to find out where the words was published.