Sherman's March to the Sea

DESCRIPTION: "Our campfires shone bright on those mountains That frowned on the river below... When a rider came out of the darkness... And shouted... 'Sherman will march to the sea.'" The Atlanta campaign and the March to the Sea are briefly retold
AUTHOR: Words: Samuel H. M. Byers (1838–1933)
EARLIEST DATE: 1865 (Sheet music published by Lee & Walker, according to Silber-SongsOfTheCivilWar)
KEYWORDS: Civilwar patriotic derivative
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
May 13-16, 1864 - William T. Sherman attacks J. E. Johnston's army at Resaca on the way from Tennessee to Atlanta. Sherman failed to move Johnston's army, but forced the Confederates to fall back by threatening their supply line
June 27, 1864 - Battle of Kenesaw Mountain. For the first (and only) time in the Atlanta campaign, Sherman tried a direct assault on Johnston's lines. It failed bloodily. Sherman then once again levered Johnston out of his lines by maneuver
(July 17, 1864 - Jefferson Davis relieves Johnston and replaces him with the more aggressive but less competent John Bell Hood. Hood's attacking strategy cost his army severely and by July 25 left him besieged in Atlanta)
Sept 1, 1864 - Hood evacuates Atlanta
Nov 15, 1864 - Sherman splits his army into two parts. One, under Thomas, was to defend Atlanta, while Sherman took nearly 60,000 men on the "March to the Sea"
Dec 10, 1864 - Sherman's forces reach Savannah
Dec 21, 1864 - Sherman captures Savannah
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Peters-FolkSongsOutOfWisconsin, pp. 236-237, "When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, pp. 305-306, "The Marching Song of Sherman's Army on the Way to the Sea" (1 text)
Moore/Moore-BalladsAndFolkSongsOfTheSouthwest 131, "When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-SongsOfTheCivilWar, pp. 261-263, "When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea" (1 text, 1 tune)
Scott-TheBalladOfAmerica, pp. 248-250, "Sherman's March to the Sea" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colonial-Dames-AmericanWarSongs, pp. 97-98, When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea" (1 text)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #2103, p. 141, "Sherman's March to the Sea" (17 references)
Dime-Song-Book #16, pp. 18-19, "Sherman's March to the Sea" (1 text)
Hill-PoemsAndSongsOfTheCivilWar, pp. 206-207, "Sherman's March to the Sea" (1 text)
DT, SHERMSEA*
Roud #17738
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Rosin the Beau" (tune) and references there
ALTERNATE TITLES:
When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea
NOTES [600 words]: Silber lists this as having words by "S. B. M. Meyers" and music by W. Mack; the first source I saw (Cohen?) listed "Lt. Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers." Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, p. 141, describes a copy written by "Adjt. Boyers, of the 5th Iowa, while confined in the Rebel Prison Camp, Columbia, S.C."
It would appear one of these is an error of hearing for the others. Since the existence of Byers can be verified (one sheet music copy calls him adjutant of the Fifth Iowa Regiment), I decided to list the song by him despite Silber's claim to have seen the original sheet music.
Byers in fact has an article in the "Biographical Dictionary of Iowa." Born in Pennsylvania, his mother died when he was young, and his father took him to Iowa in 1851. He became a lawyer in 1861, but promptly joined the Union Army and became a member of the 5th Iowa. In late 1863, Byers and many others of the 5th Iowa were captured at the Battle of Chattanooga. He bounced around several prison camps. The Biographical Dictionary gives this account of how the song came to be:
"The Union prisoners, shut off from the outside world, had no idea how the war was progressing. A slave, assigned to carry food to the prisoners, hid an article from a South Carolina newspaper inside a loaf of bread. The article carried news of General William Sherman's victory at Atlanta and his triumphant march across Georgia to Savannah. Byers read the article and was inspired to write a poem that he titled 'Sherman's March to the Sea.' Another prisoner, W. O. Rockwell, set the poem to music, and soon the camp's glee club was singing it. The song rapidly worked its way through the network of prisoners. When another prisoner, Lieutenant Daniel W. Tower, was exchanged by way of an Alabama prison camp, he left the prison carrying a copy of the song with him, smuggled through the lines in his wooden leg. Once available outside the prisons, the song quickly became a national sensation. It gave Sherman's march its famous name and became a Union rallying cry."
The Biographical Dictionary lists several articles about Byers and this song; all are old enough that I expect they are quite hard to find.
Although Byers would life for almost seventy years after writing this song, nothing he did after that was as noteworthy. You can still find low-quality reprints of his book With Fire and Sword; he also published Pony Express and Other Poems, The Happy Isles and Other Poems, plus The bells of Capistrano and other romances of the Spanish days in California a A Layman's Life of Jesus, What I Saw in Dixie: Or, Sixteen Months in Rebel Prisons Twenty Years in Europe; A Consul-General's Memories of Noted People, Switzerland and the Swiss and perhaps others.
His "Song of Iowa," set to the tune of "O Tannenbaum," became the official state song in 1911; it begins "You ask what land I love the best, Iowa, 'tis Iowa. The fairest state of all the west, Iowa, O Iowa" (see William E. Studwell and Bruce R. Schueneman, State Songs of the United States: An Annotated Anthology, The Haworth Press, 1997, p. 36; Wikipedia has a slightly different text). However, Studwell and Schueneman say on p. 34 that the "Iowa Corn Song" is better known and perhaps the most important Iowa song.
Colonial-Dames-AmericanWarSongs attributes it to Henry Clay Work, but I would assume this is by confusion with "Marching Through Georgia."
The song was popular enough that it actually had a new tune set to it by David A. Warden; this is Wolf's "c" text. Certainly there were a lot of copies printed; Wolf lists 17 editions in all. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: SBoA248

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