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Songs For Southern Patriots.
Jasper, Tennessee: E. F. Redfield & Co., [1861]. Broadside, 9.5” x 7” plus margins. Inscriptions in ink on verso: “No 673”; “No 674”. CONDITION: Some stains and separations along old folds occasionally affecting text, no significant loss of sense. An unrecorded Confederate song-sheet published very early in the Civil War by an up-and-coming young bookseller and businessman in Jasper, Tennessee. The first of the two anonymously-authored songs printed here, “To Mr. Lincoln,” was evidently composed early in the conflict—before General Winfield Scott resigned as General-in-Chief of the Union armies in November of 1861, since the tenth verse refers to “Scott and [General John E.] Wool,” and the South could still claim to have “whipped you in every battle.” In addition to such taunts, the song rails against “Old Mr. Link” as a “babe / In military glory; / An arrant fool, a party tool, / A traitor and a tory” and condemns his hypocritical treatment of African Americans: “You know its so, at Fort Monroe, / You put them all to labor; Whom you declare, are free as air, / Your equal and your neighbor…” The earliest printings we locate of this song (titled “To Mr. Linkhorn”) appeared on September 4th, 1861, in newspapers in Florence, Alabama and Raleigh, North Carolina. It then appeared in Songs of the South (1863, as well as perhaps the earlier 1862 edition) under the title “To Mr. Lincoln.” The second song is a “Southern Version” of the well-known title “Root Hog Or Die,” which was used by various songs on both sides of the conflict and refers to the practice of releasing pigs to fend for themselves in tough times (“root, hog, or die”). The first verse proclaims that “We’ll have our Independence, I’ll tell you the reason why, / Jeff. Davis will make them sing, ‘Root hog or die.’” Each subsequent verse ends with some version of this brief chorus. This “version” appears as early as August 15, 1861, in the The Knoxville Register, where it is credited to “J. Clay Horne, 2d Lieutenant ‘Kentucky Braves’” while he was at “Camp Trenton, Tenn.” It is also included in Songs of the South. Edwin Forbes Redfield (1842–1909) was born in Vermont to physician Horace Linzy Redfield and Clarissa Jane Forbes but moved with his mother and younger brother to Jasper, Tennessee, following his father’s early death. He established a bookstore in Jasper in the late 1850s or very early 1860s. According to a finding aid at the University of Memphis Special Collections, Redfield enlisted in the Confederate Army in June, 1861. However, documents in Fold3 (under the name E F Redfield) suggest he did not muster in until September, 1862. He fought as part of Company G of the Third Regiment, which spent much of the war in Wheeler’s cavalry and saw action across Kentucky and Tennessee. Redfield mustered out on April 27th, 1865 and returned to Jasper, where in 1866 he married Adelia S. Craighead (1869–1954), had two children, and became a popular agricultural tool manufacturer and dry-goods merchant. Around 1871 he relocated to Nashville and advertised branches of E. F. Redfield & Co. in New York, Baltimore, St Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and Louisville. By 1877 he had acquired a piano manufacturing company and was ensconced in Texas, and by 1878 the firm announced itself as “among the largest dealers in Pianos in the United States, and will guarantee to deliver pianos and organs, at any point in Texas or the Indian Territory…They now do business in over a hundred towns in Texas…” (“E. F. Redfield and Co.”). In 1908 he was admitted to Camp Nicholls, an “Old Soldiers Home,” and died on December 31st, 1909. We find no trace of this broadside in OCLC or elsewhere. REFERENCES: “E. F. Redfield and Co.,” Atoka Independent (Oklahoma), June 28, 1878, p. 4; “Civil War Collection,” University of Memphis Libraries online; “To Mr. Linkhorn,” The North Carolina Standard and the Florence Gazette, September 4, 1961.
Item #9370
On Hold
Price: $950.00
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