Battle Cry of Freedom

The story

"Battle Cry of Freedom", also known as "Rally 'Round the Flag", was written in 1862, during the American Civil War, by the composer George Frederick Root (1820–1895). It was a patriotic song for the causes of Unionism and abolitionism, and it spread fast: over 700,000 copies of the sheet music are estimated to have circulated, and the publisher ran fourteen printing presses at once without keeping up with demand.

It was a favourite of Union soldiers. Henry Stone, a veteran, recalled in the late 1880s how a glee club from Chicago brought the new song to his camp, where it "ran through the camp like wildfire" and put as much spirit into the army as a victory; it was heard day and night at every camp fire. The historian Christian L. McWhirter explains its success by its even-handedness: its definition of the Northern cause is open-ended, with anti-slavery feeling there for those who looked for it but not so pronounced as to offend those who fought only for the Union. The chorus endorses a perpetual Union and rejects secession, but the cry it raises is one of freedom, which, given Root's political beliefs and other activities, he clearly meant to suggest some degree of abolitionism.

The song was so popular that the composer H. L. Schreiner and the lyricist W. H. Barnes adapted it for the Confederacy. A modified Union version served as the campaign song of the Lincoln–Johnson ticket in the presidential election of 1864, and again after the war, for Garfield in 1880. Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a friend of Root's, wrote in his diary that he thought "it should be our national anthem", and in 1863 made it the basis of his concert paraphrase for solo piano, "Le Cri de délivrance", opus 55, dedicated to Root. Jane Curry Blaikie Hoge printed an extended version in The Boys in Blue (1867); Walter Van Brunt recorded the Union version on an Edison Blue Amberol cylinder in 1916; and Charles Ives quoted the song in several of his works, among them his own patriotic song "They Are There".

What it says

A rallying song for the Union: its men are called to gather around the flag, shouting the battle cry of freedom, for a Union that must last and against those who would break it. The song looks to the end of slavery without making it the whole cause. The mood is stirring and confident.

The words