When I was only about 10 or 11 years old ( I was born in 1946 ) and a student of the Boys High School, Allahabad our music teacher taught us a song ‘While we were marching through Georgia’. We had no idea of its historical context, nor probably did our music teacher. It was just the lyrics and tune which fascinated and thrilled us all.
I still remember some lines in the song :
” Sing it as we used to sing it 50,000 strong
While we were marching through Georgia ”
It was much later that I learnt that it was a song sung by soldiers of General Sherman’s Union army which marched through Georgia, from Atlanta to Savannah, in November-December, 1864 during the American Civil War, spreading fire and devastation to the civilian population.
A couple of years back I was in California, USA and had been invited to a function in Atlanta, Georgia.
I called my American friend Bill Tammeus, who lives with his wife in Kansas City, Missouri, and asked him if it would be okay if I sang the song before a Georgian audience.
Bill, who is now 81 years old, was my classmate in Boys High School, Allahabad in 1957 or so. His father was an agriculture expert, who came to India in the mid 1950s to teach agricultural techniques in the Allahabad Agriculture Institute, and Bill came along with him as a child. Later, he returned with his parents to America, and became a journalist in the Kansas City Star, the newspaper for which the great American novelist Ernest Hemingway once worked.
Bill is now retired, living in Kansas City, Missouri, and spends his time doing social work, and as a preacher in his Presbyterian church. He also writes ‘Bill’s Faith Matters Blog’. We have been friends and in contact for over 68 years, quite a record.
Bill advised me strongly against singing the song in Georgia, or in any other southern state which had once been part of the Confederacy.
I said that the Civil War had been fought in America in 1861-65, and it is surely silly to react to this song after the passage of such a long period of time. Bill’s reply was, “My friend, history does not forget”.
Though Sherman’s March to the Sea is regarded by all military thinkers as a great military feat, which broke the back of the Confederacy, it wreaked such havoc in Georgia that his name still evokes hateful memories in the south. Sherman introduced the concept of ‘scorched earth’ and ‘total war’, by letting his soldiers burn houses of civilians, plunder farms, destroy the crops and kill the livestock ( except what they needed for themselves ), destroy railroads, industries and civilian property. His famous statement was “I will make Georgia howl”.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shermans-March-to-the-Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea
Evidently Georgia is still howling, and to sing ‘While we were marching through Georgia’ in Georgia would be an inflammatory act, possibly resulting in violence to the singer.
So I took Bill’s advice, and did not sing it in Atlanta
Attachments area
Preview YouTube video Marching through Georgia – Union Marching SongPreview YouTube video Marching through Georgia – Union Marching SongPreview YouTube video Sherman’s MarchPreview YouTube video Sherman’s MarchPreview YouTube video Sherman’s March to the SeaPreview YouTube video Sherman’s March to the Sea
You can write to Bill on wtammeus@gmail.com. He will be happy to hear from you and will respond
