Battle Cry of Freedom – piano

The brave boys and men who answered Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis’ call in 1861 were eager to “see the elephant” as the phrase went – that is, to experience combat for the first time. But as they marched off to the Civil War to the sound of cheering crowds and heroic music, few of them knew what being in battle truly meant. This sombre version of Battle Cry of Freedom is meant to illustrate the awakening to that reality.
Before the Civil War, the popular notion of combat was informed by stories emphasising heroic deeds, often with an exotic backdrop. Volunteering to fight was not seen as an unwelcome duty, it was an honourable calling, and, for many, a chance to see the great big world that lay awaiting beyond the farm or small town where they had spent their entire lives.


What these young men were introduced to, in battles like Shiloh, was not at all like the romantic fantasy they had nourished at home. Young men who had envisioned themselves the heroic figure at the center of an epic war-tale found instead anonymity in the ranks of blue and gray uniforms. They were marched not to the kind of glory they had read about in the books, but into a slaughterhouse of severed limbs and wounded men screaming in agony. They saw the comrades with whom they had formed friendships in training camp, or known since childhood, grotesquely mutilated by bullets and shrapnel. They had finally seen the elephant.


This instrumental version is performed by Marcos Molina. Illustration: ”The Battle of Antietam” by Thure de Thulstrup.

Read eyewitness accounts from the Civil War: https://whenamericawasyoung.com/narra...