Feb282009
Richmond Is A Hard Road to Travel
Filed under Music by Kim at 9:29 pm on Feb 28 2009
On the way home from Leesburg today after getting a tattoo in a building that predates our house by a good 75 years at least (our house is a Victorian era building), my now-psychic iPod decided to give us a civil war song. While my hometown is in Virginia and I’ve lived my entire life south of the Mason-Dixon line, my ancestry was either Yankee or European that far back. Nevertheless this confederate ditty caught my attention and I made Jack listen to it about 6 times so we could piece out the words and try to figure out the history. 
As it turns out, there’s a wikipedia entry on the song, and plenty to learn about why Fremont is referred to as the Wooly-Horse. The version I have and like excised the last two more offensive verses. It was done in the 60s by The New Lost City Ramblers, the music of whom is making me want to go watch A Mighty Wind again.
This is my favorite verse:
Then said Lincoln unto Pope, / “You can make the trip, I hope / I will save the Universal Yankee nation, / To make sure of no defeat, I’ll leave no lines of retreat, And issue a famous proclamation.” / But that same dreaded Jackson, this fellow laid his whacks / And made him, by compulsion, a seceder, / And Pope took rapid flight from Manassas’ second fight, / Twas his very last appearance as a leader.
That last bit seems to be non-historical, but funny all the same. Jack said that the excerpt I read to him from Pope’s letter to his army sounded to him like a terrible CEO speech at an all-hands meeting just before you know half the company is going to get laid off.
I am sure you long for an opportunity to win the distinction you are capable of achieving. That opportunity I shall endeavor to give you. Meantime I desire you to dismiss from your minds certain phrases, which I am sorry to find so much in vogue amongst you. I hear constantly of “taking strong positions and holding them,” of “lines of retreat,” and of “bases of supplies.” Let us discard such ideas. The strongest position a soldier should desire to occupy is one from which he can most easily advance against the enemy.
No wonder they all thought he was a jackass? At any rate, you can check out the entire Smithsonian Folkways collection including Songs of the Civil War on emusic or elsewhere if you like. Or you can just listen for free on youtube. I myself am going to ponder how giant topics like History and Science failed to be interesting to me when I was in school and had all the time in the world to pursue them, but now that I have a job and a house to clean and all that adult rot, I could sit around and research all day and be a happy camper.
Besides; If you’ve been on 95 South between Alexandria and Richmond lately, you will agree that Richmond is a hard road to travel.
