When Johnny Comes Marching Home AgainThe story of "When Johnny comes Marching Home" is also the story of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore. Gilmore, an 1848 Irish immigrant to Boston, was considered by no less a musician than John Philip Sousa as the "Father of the American Band."
Gilmore led a number of bands in the Boston area, including Patrick Gilmore's Band. At the beginning of the Civil War, in September 1861, the band enlisted as a group in the Union Army and was attached to the 24th Massachusetts Infantry. Gilmore's band served both as musicians and stretcher-bearers at such horrific battles as Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Richmond. Gilmore was posted to occupied New Orleans, Louisiana in 1863 and, as Grand Master of the Union Army, ordered to reorganize the state military bands. It was at this time that he claimed to have composed the words and music to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."
"When Johnny Comes Marching Home" bears a remarkable similarity to the melody of the Irish song "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye," which might be considered a protest song in the vein of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" The Irish song concerns conscription into the British Army
Quote:
Where are your legs that used to run, huroo, huroo,
Where are your legs that used to run, huroo, huroo,
Where are your legs that used to run when first you went for to carry a gun?
Alas, your dancing days are done, och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye.
It is possible that this air was written before Gilmore's "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" and that Gilmore unconsciously might have borrowed from it. For his part, Gilmore claimed that he had adapted an African-American spiritual.
Sheet music for "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" was first published by Henry Tolman and Company of Boston in 1863 and bore the dedication "To the Army and Navy of the Union." Gilmore published the song under the pseudonym Louis Lambert, although the title page also read "as introduced by Gilmore's Band."
