Stephen Foster War Songs

The two items I found while visiting the special collections and archives room here at EKU where two original songs written by Stephen Foster. A man rendered the father of American music with many notable works like “Oh Susana” and “My Old Kentucky Home” also had written songs like “Bring my Brother Back to Me” and “Willie We Have Missed You”. Both during the civil war time when men where serving the union and confederacy at a very young age. Leaving their wives, mothers, children, and younger siblings to carry out the daily tasks at their home. Not knowing if they’re family member has survived from one battle to the next. They clung to the hope of each day that they would see them again.

Each song’s lyrics, both written by Stephen Foster offer a different perspective on families wanting their men home from war. In “Bring my Brother Back to Me’’ written in 1864 in my opinion was written in a sister who loved and missed her brother perspective the lyrics talk about; bringing her brother back after the war is done, and the tears shed daily by not knowing his fate. In the sisters perspective she just want to continue with life with her family before the war had begun. This differs a little from the points that Foster’s “Willie We Have missed you are trying to make. I think that this sing was written in the angle of a wife and mother who was awaiting the arrival of her husband coming home from war, and despite the doubtfulness of those around her she kept the hoping and believing that he would return.

I found both of the songs of these songs to be interesting because even though there was a war going on foster being a man from Pennsylvania never denounced the war as being something bad. He did not write his songs in the views of families that were angry, but instead he showed a heavy emotion and sense of hope that these men fighting would one day return home to be with their families.