Harry Macarthy stood at center stage in the New Orleans Academy of Music one day in September 1861, singing to a packed house. His song was one few people had ever heard, but the audience of Confederate soldiers–men from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, passing through the city on their way to the Virginia front–took to it immediately. They stood and cheered as Macarthy sang.

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The consummate performer, Macarthy was not just singing; he was also playing a role, the part of a Confederate volunteer heading off to war. He was dressed in a full Confederate army uniform just like the men in the crowd. His wife, Lottie Estelle, played the sweetheart he was leaving behind. As Macarthy sang, Lottie dashed onto the stage waving a blue silk flag with a single white star on it, a popular symbol of Southern independence. When Lottie reached her husband, she threw her arms around his neck. It was a scene the young soldiers in the audience remembered vividly, and they could barely restrain themselves as Macarthy took ‘The Bonnie Blue Flag’ into its chorus:

Hurrah! Hurrah! For Southern rights, hurrah!

Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.

With every ‘hurrah,’ the soldiers jumped up to cheer. The gathering was on the verge of mayhem, so Macarthy, experienced stage performer that he was, waited until the crowd settled down before he launched into the second verse.

Still, the more he sang, the more the audience howled. One soldier in the crowd, a member of Terry’s Texas Rangers, was so worked up that he remained on his feet, cheering in oblivion after everyone else had sat down. His blind enthusiasm attracted the attention of a policeman patrolling the hall. The officer approached, tapped him on the shoulder, and told him to sit down. But the young man was too wound up. He responded with a blow that sent the officer tumbling.

In an instant, all was bedlam. Police tried to subdue the troublemaker, but the Rangers were not about to let one of their own be hauled off to a New Orleans jail. More police streamed into the hall to help, but to no avail. Chaos reigned until someone was struck with the good sense to summon Colonel Frank Terry and Mayor John T. Monroe. Both men rushed to the scene and called off their men. Order was restored, and Terry led his rowdy Rangers back to the relative quiet of camp.

Within 24 hours of the near riot, ‘The Bonnie Blue Flag’ had spread throughout the Confederate army. Talk of Macarthy spread, too. Not only had he given the memorable performance of the song in New Orleans; he himself had also written the stirring lyric, setting them to the tune of an old Irish folk song called ‘The Irish Jaunting Car.’ Macarthy was a hit, and for the rest of the war, he would do his best to keep his song and himself popular, taking his show on the road all over the South and providing diversion for thousands of civilians and soldiers. He lifted the morale of war-weary Southerners much as comedian Bob Hope would do for Americans during World War II. Like Hope in his days of entertaining GIs overseas, Macarthy was the most popular performer in his country, the Confederate States of America.

Actually, the South was not Macarthy’s native land. He was an Englishman of Scotch-Irish descent and was 16 years old by the time he came to America in 1849. He launched his entertainment career shortly after arriving, starting out in 1850 playing bit parts in Philadelphia, and then joining an acting troupe in New Orleans in 1855.

He was a talented actor with the good looks and charisma typical of a popular performer. One of the few existing descriptions of him says he was ‘a small, handsome man, and brimful of the humor and the pathos and impulsive generosity of the Celtic race.’ The only known pictures of him are those that grace the covers of a concert program and two pieces of sheet music. All were published at the height of his career and show him clean-shaven with thick black hair covering his ears. He had a straight nose and thin lips.

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