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Music During The Civil War

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The Civil War is one of the most iconic and well known wars in American history. This was a war of massive proportion and for some consider it to be one of the most heart wrenching wars of the time. There are very few that believe that something amazing came out of the war, like Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, according to (www.Civilwar.org). These two men are different, but both saw the same need for music and the drawing of sound to their ears.
The Civil War was a war that divided two sides of one country, the northern and the southern parts of the United States. The Union against their former brothers the Confederacy. According to (www.history.com) “some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more injured by the war”. These …show more content…

This music was called sheet music. From the site (www.civilwar.org), it is said that “Sales of sheet music were immensely profitable for music publishing houses on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line”. This means for the first time people's music was able to be shared and be communicated. Many people became very excited and followed the lead. The purpose of writing music in such a way was that, “Composed with the deliberate intention of stirring the emotions, music can become iconic over time, evoking compelling feelings and memories in an individual or a broad listening audience” (www.loc.gov). In most cases, people might even say the majority of these songs were very politically driven. It's said on (ww.civilwar.org ) that “when soldiers North and South marched off to war, they took with them a love of song that transcended the political and philosophical divide between them”. This shows just how involved the men who marched were to give their life away for their beliefs and their cause. Many people don't realize, but African American men fighting for freedom and for there relief for slavery often wrote music and had a spiritual side as well. In a passage from (scalar.usc.edu) that “African American music during the American Civil War largely consisted of a genre of music called the “folk spiritual”. According to scholar Christian McWhirter, “spirituals were originally sung by working slaves”. These African american men used God and showed many different aspects behind their music. It was was like the first real sign of unity in the

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