“Come all you friends and neighbors…”

Every spring, as I finish teaching my unit on the American Civil War, my thoughts turn towards that most terrible of American experiences.  Me being who I am always makes that rather intense.  This year, after reading Ken’s recent post concerning music and the violence of war, an impulse worked its way up in my mind to let the Civil War inform my musical selection this week.  I have a ballad I’ll introduce today and then explore in depth in my next post.   I’m sure we’ll come back to this era for material again!

Now, I’m not talking about “Dixie” or “Battle Hymn of the Republic” here.  My aim is different.

My targets when I do this will be those songs from the Civil War that are, or at least function similarly to, murder ballads; those songs where I suppose we can see something of the intersection of the personal and political dimensions of murder. Rest assured I have no political point to make about America then or now.  Like my fellow writers here, I’m purely looking to plumb the depths of human experience through song.

“While travelling through this country in sorrow and distress…”

This week’s selection is a murder ballad proper.  Jean Ritchie even introduces “Hiram Hubbard” as such in her performance of it with Doc Watson on Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City, one of the first Folkways albums I ever owned.  The introduction to the ballad in her song book adds a bit more.

Lyrics (with introduction) from Ritchie’s song book

Jean in 2008 gave a somewhat more detailed explanation of the song that you can hear in a link on this page.  She follows up with a performance, accompanied by her son on banjo.

The story is murky in this version. Though, as it’s only a century and a half old, there must certainly be a substantial core of truth left in the narrative. Put simply, Hiram Hubbard is captured by “rebels”, presumably accused of murder and, after begging to write his will, is summarily executed by firing squad.

Long before I heard Jean’s 2008 explanation, I’d figured out this was a “bushwacker’s song” as she called it. It is likely about the aftermath of a murder done from ambush by a partisan. It’s only logical.  Few other offenses would have earned white civilians in Kentucky a formal execution in the field.  And it seems to me a black man, free or enslaved, would neither have been executed by firing squad nor have been likely to become the subject of a sympathetic mountain murder ballad.

I imagine the song is the only record of the deed, and so we probably can’t know for sure. But Hubbard most likely was accused of ambushing and murdering some southern soldier or officer.  His guilt or innocence we must leave to imagination.  It’s well-established (not only based on Jean Ritchie’s word) that the ballad is from Kentucky.  And as we’ll see in my next post, if such ugliness were going to happen in Kentucky, it would likely have happened in the Cumberlands; in the eastern part of the state that Jean’s family called home.

“In chains they bound him fast…”

Now, almost certainly based on her memory of what her father told her, Jean suggested that it’s a song about events after the war, and that Hubbard perhaps was a Union soldier caught behind southern lines.  Others, no doubt influenced by Jean’s performance, have perpetuated this explanation.

I have immense respect for Jean and her family’s roots, but this interpretation makes little sense.  For one thing, there were no ‘southern lines’ after the war.  During the war, eastern Kentucky stayed in the Union, on the map and in many of its citizens’ hearts and minds.  As well, eleven ‘rebels’ riding around carrying muskets, willing and able to hold a drum-head trial and organize a firing squad, just doesn’t seem a likely post-war situation.  Outlaws and marauders operated well after the war, yes; but under what circumstances would such men ever bother with the formality of a firing squad?  As brutal as it was, the formality of the execution indicates a connection to some semblance of military order.

It may be that the context doesn’t matter to you, so I’ll let it go for now.  But even if you feel that way, check out my second post of the week for some exploration of another compelling version of the song, and maybe another surprise or two.  If the context does matter to you, I invite you to join me in that post as well, where I’ll take my typical dip into dark historical waters.  I think I’ve got it; but educated guessing will be the order of that day.

“His body shrunk away…”

Certainly, whatever our take on context, what we don’t need to speculate about here and now is the existential truth of the ballad.  No doubt, it happened; and probably to an innocent man.

I love to sing this ballad, and I always perform it for my students when we study the Civil War.  They should know “the wrong that men can do to men,” and more than for the sake of historical literacy; I sing such songs so that they might know compassion through history.

When I perform, I stumble in chains with Hiram Hubbard, led by young men in ragged butternut through dark hollows to the place I know we’ll die. I know his desperation as he begs to write his will.  I feel the rope wrap tight around me too as the Rebels tie him to the tree.  And I pass with him as I spill out the lyrics in as strong a voice as I can muster…

Eleven balls went through him, his body shrunk away.

Like I said; it’s a proper murder ballad.