“Was My Brother In The Battle?”: A History of American Wartime Ballads

“Farwell mother: you may never press me to your breast again. But oh, you’ll not forget me mother, if I’m numbered with the slain.”

-George Frederick Root, “Just Before the Battle, Mother” (1864)

The tale is as old as military conflict itself. A beloved son –or perhaps a brother or lover– is compelled to leave the comforts of home to fight a distant war. In his vacated place, there stands a unique sort of sorrow, which though tinged with pride and patriotism, is melancholy nonetheless. This sentimentalist image of grief on the home front dominated popular American war songs up until World War II. This theme communicates, among numerous other messages, that war has consequences besides the loss of human life. War, however necessary it may be, takes away precious relationships and robs the young of their opportunity to live a full life. It was this that was once the subject of the American Wartime parlor tune. Yet this once  popular staple of American music has all but gone extinct, living on as a contorted and politicized form of its former self. The progressive politicization of these war songs throughout American history, indeed, represents the gradual division of our nation itself.

Songs of Sacrifice

In the 19th-century, parlor songs often responded to all sorts of current events, but were especially focused  on war. Music allowed those who were not on the front lines of conflicts to vividly imagine what cannon and gunfire might be like. Women especially enjoyed and created such music, seeking a greater understanding of the experiences of their fathers, brothers, and spouses through art. Piano arrangements of military marching tunes reigned supreme over sonatas and minuets, and composers used a compositional technique known as word painting to mimic gunfire and the cannons’ roar to reenact famous battles. 

Women were oftentimes a central subject in wartime parlor songs. They were, in short, what soldiers were fighting for—be they family or an allegory for America. The songs that were targeted towards them occupy a space that is not anti-war, but still concerned with its consequences, namely the sacrifice of human life, which did not lose its sadness no matter how righteous. During the Civil War, this genre was pioneered and continuously dominated by George Frederick Root. Abraham Lincoln himself recognized Root’s contributions during the war, writing to the composer that “you have done more than a hundred generals and a thousand orators.” Root himself was a supporter of the Union, but his songs were popular in the Confederacy too (usually with altered lyrics), indicating that sentimental themes in music continued across the Mason-Dixon line. This was only possible because of the use of grief in his music. In a war that pitted brother against brother, mourning constituted a rare cultural common ground that allowed the north and south to come together, even when they seemed irreconcilably at odds. The diametrically opposed sides of the American Civil War grieved their lost unity through such music as well. Moreover, Root is far from the only composer to find common ground in grief.

Stephen Foster’s “Was My Brother in the Battle” was published in 1862, a year after the first shots were fired in the American Civil War. It tells the tale, in three verses, of a young woman looking for her brother, who has gone missing since joining the conflict on the side of the Union. Foster’s lyrics give us many clues as to the identity of the singer’s brother, an aspect which emphasizes his importance as a person over his contributions to the war effort. The lyric “noble Highland host” likely references the composer’s own Scottish heritage, and “the flag of Erin” is a nod to the many Irish immigrants who joined the Union army. Foster’s usage of these references may have served the purpose of intergroup unity in the north during the war as well. The song is deeply patriotic, but, nevertheless, melancholy. The singer’s brother is dauntless and handsome: the spitting image of the perfect patriot in the field of battle; yet his sister can only describe him as such because she is in the act of looking for him after his death. The idea of one’s own brother in the battle extended far beyond Foster’s protagonist: the brother is a realization that the American Civil War tore families apart, not only through conscription, but through its very nature as a secessionist conflict. It is not unlikely that soldiers asked themselves if their enemies could be their brothers. 

Stephen Foster died not two years after the publication of “Was My Brother in the Battle.” While his family claims his death was accidental, it is likely Foster took his own life, unable to reconcile his relationship to his pro-slavery family with his own beliefs, which some scholars believe were becoming more and more abolitionist as the Civil War progressed. Foster is thus a victim of the Civil War too, and an example of the collateral damage done by prolonged and widespread political division occurring outside of combat.

Decades after the American Civil War, Haydn Wood’s 1916 song “Roses of Picardy” circulated among Alliance ranks and civilians equally during World War I, reminding soldiers poignantly of what they left behind, and their families of the grief they might experience in the event of their male relatives’ deaths. The song tells the tale of Colinette, who waits beneath a poplar tree for a lover that will never return. A song like “Roses of Picardy” —that is to say, one sung mostly by combatants themselves— speaks to the undeniable fact that soldiers generally do not wish for wars to continue on long precisely because of the chance that they will never see the families and friends they left behind. The scale of World War I is exponentially larger than the American Civil War, which shows in the multicultural nature of “Roses of Picardy”: it is a British song with French themes that was likely sung by soldiers on all sides of the conflict. “Roses of Picardy” may be associated mostly with the Entente, but it is not at all a stretch to imagine the simple story of a lover who never comes home speaking to the fears of soldiers on all sides. Still, it is only implied that the “rose” that has “died in Picardy” is a soldier, though the circulation of “Roses of Picardy” more or less confirms such a narrative. This newfound subtlety of the genre, wherein narratives of loss begin to hide their relation to war, signifies the beginning of the end for the sentimental war ballad.

Patriotism Becomes Protest

The decline of the sentimental wartime ballad became much more rapid after World War II as conflicts became more controversial in nature. Jumping ahead to the Vietnam War, we see a new genre take the place of the sentimental war ballad: the protest song. Though extant long before the Vietnam War (from 1857, see  “Johnny I hardly knew ye”), protest songs thrived in the 1960s and 70s. Songs like Phil Ochs’ “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” criticized the military industrial complex while finding little to like about the concept of war as a whole. The music of the Vietnam War made efforts to distance itself from war in ways balladry of the 19th century never did: I am not marching anymore; I am not a “fortunate son.” Though it surely existed, music in favor of the Vietnam War is overshadowed in the literature by the counterculture surrounding the conflict, which understood grief as a divisive loss rather than a unifying one. Indeed, soldiers coming home from a tour in Vietnam were often met with protesters when they set foot in the United States again. Opponents of the war projected their grievances onto soldiers, who were usually conscripted—as much victims of the Vietnam War as they were participants in it. Some protesters cared little for the experiences of those who didn’t make it home too. Protest music had the capacity to paint soldiers as ignorant of the causes behind the Vietnam War, conjuring little sympathy for those who had supposedly died fighting of their own volition for something they did not understand. While contemporary depictions of counterculture during the Vietnam War, such as the 2020 film The Trial of the Chicago 7, depict protesters as sensitive to losses sustained in combat, it is well documented that many rebuked such sentimental values too.

Of course, the patriotic treatment of loss at the core of songs like “Was My Brother in the Battle” never went away, not even during controversial conflicts such as the Vietnam War. Plenty of families undoubtedly viewed the deaths of their drafted sons as unfair. They did not see a purpose to the war and felt that the US government had not given them enough in return for the lives of their children.  However, there were those who lauded the patriotism of their fallen family members in spite of vocal opposition to American involvement in Vietnam. In a 1969 interview conducted by AP’s Jeffery Blankfort, the mother of Duane Greenlee spoke highly of her son, who died only 44 days after his deployment. She claimed that “he’d rather go there and fight for mom and dad and his brothers and sisters than have them come here,” and that her thirteen year old son “[couldn’t] wait to get in the marines” as well. Her account is among the smallest in Blankfort’s collection, and rather outspoken in its positivity towards the war. What all of his interviews share is grief, yet there is so little of it in music of the period. When present at all, grief is weaponized against the Vietnam War, as it is in a song like Martha Reeves & The Vandellas “I Should Be Proud.” The overarching message of the song is that the war is wrong, not that the war has a cost. Johnny died for the “evils of society,” not for the wife he left at home, as the US government would have liked widows to believe.

The War Ballad Today

Many Americans alive today were born into a country constantly at war —be it Vietnam, the Cold War, Afghanistan, or Iraq— and they understand it not as an exceptional and harrowing circumstance, but as a fact of life. Conflicts are routinely rationalized through a narrative of good intentions. America is often seen as the world’s police force, with a duty to intervene in foreign conflicts. Waxing sentimentality about modern conflicts is more commonly read as an endorsement of them, while in the 19th century, it would have been read as a commentary on their effects. A 19th century song centered around grief, like George Frederick Root’s “Just Before the Battle Mother” describes both the grief of losing a son to war and a patriotic outlook on war itself, recognizing the equal status of both these feelings. Artists who use sentimentalism in their music today tend to choose one of these elements —either grief or patriotism— and to make such a choice is synonymous with taking a stance for or against war.

Darryl Worley’s “Have You Forgotten” rebuts opponents of the Iraq War, positing that losses in conflict are necessary to repay the losses of 9/11. He claims that soldiers in Iraq assuredly “remember what they’re fighting for,” and that waxing sentimental at all about 9/11 should logically result in support of the Iraq War. “Have You Forgotten” is not a song you are likely to see played by politically left-leaning individuals. Worley’s image of war is one in which both war and death are right, and consequently, one in which war cannot be right if death is wrong. Its co-option of sentimentalist lyrical techniques weaponizes grief in favor of war; something that is decidedly different from the songs of the 19th century. Similarly, songs such as Sting’s “Russians” reflect a Cold War climate in which taking a middle ground is a politically polarizing stance in itself simply because it requires humanizing the Soviet Union. “Do the Russians love their children too?” and “have you forgotten?” are both questions with simple, seemingly nonpartisan answers. But here, these questions evoke political division and international turmoil more than the common ground of heartache during war.

In Closing

Though its artistic footprint has significantly reduced in size, the collateral of war itself has not changed since the 19th century. Families still send their children to war, never to see them again, and that heartache is the same as it was for families in the American Civil War. An understanding of the cost of war may relate to taking a stance against it, but anti-war sentiment is not inherent to grief. Songs like “Was My Brother in the Battle” and “Roses of Picardy” successfully separate grief from politics, their popularity helping to build comradery in war on the home front; but now, it seems, to grieve is to protest. What remains of sentimentalism in our popular music pushes us to support wars and refute their opponents, who themselves have a robust literature of anti-war music that rebukes understanding conflicts through their costs rather than their causes. In a world where politics find their way into almost every aspect of our lives, we are no longer free to ask, as Stephen Foster did, “was my brother in the battle?”

“What might save us, me and you, is if the Russians love their children too.”

-Sting, “Russians,” (1985)