Bull Run Monument Dedication Hymn

First Bull Run Battle Monument Dedication

From John Hennessy:

We have come to see memorialization and remembrance of the Civil War as a tool of reconciliation. Not in 1865. Attached are the words of a hymn written for and sung at the dedication of two monuments on the Bull Run Battlefield in June 1865–monuments built by Union soldiers at the end of the war. The dedicatory ceremony attracted a huge crowd, including Generals Orlando Willcox and Samuel P. Heintzelman, who both spoke.

The words to the hymn are bitter and angry, written two months after the end of the war and Lincoln’s assassination.

After harsh lines about slavery and treason, the hymn concludes:

“And so, upon the bloody spot,
Where now this monument is raised,
Shall rebel bones and memories rot,
But patriots’ names for aye be praised.”

The words were sung to the hymn, “Old Hundred,” familiar to most today as the Doxology–sung every week in many Protestant churches.

 

For more on he monument dedication, see here.

The above hymn first appeared in the New York Times on June 13, 1865, as part of an account by a correspondent who attended the dedication.