Today, we bring you the second part of Lance Herdegen’s two-part piece about the music of the Iron Brigade, which was not only one of the most famous fighting units in the Army of the Potomac but whose members also happened to have a particular ear for music. “Any veteran memory of the long marching columns evoked faint echoes of the soldiers singing or the tooting of the brass bands,” Lance wrote in part one.
During the long march or short, said Loyd Grayson Harris, an officer with the 6th Wisconsin, when the bands ceased playing, a chorus of voices would lift from the columns. The Prairie du Chien boys especially liked to sing:
O never mind the weather, but get over double trouble,
For we are bound for the happy land of Canaan.
Then the Juneau County boys, despite “the religious warnings” of pious Rufus Dawes, would add:
My name it is Joe Bower
I have a brother Ike,
I came from old Missouri
Just all the way from Pike.
After several verses of “Joe Bower,” the company would conclude with the sequel where “Sally had a baby, and the baby had red hair.” Continue reading







