John Hill Hewitt: Dixie’s Original One-Man Band

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Shortly after the Civil War began in April 1861, a feisty 60-year-old met with President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia, and asked for a commission in the Confederate army. He was a graduate of West Point, he said, and wanted to serve his country. Davis took the man at his word, but refused to give him the requested commission because of his age. Instead he offered him a job as a drillmaster for new recruits. Such a post would never do for John Hill Hewitt. He felt he was worthy of much more, so he turned down Davis’s offer and returned to what he did best: writing songs and managing theaters. In the process he earned for himself lasting distinction as the ‘Bard of the Confederacy,’ and perhaps served his country better than he ever would have as a soldier.

Hewitt was not merely an aging man with patriotic pride when he met with Davis. He was one of the country’s best-known songwriters, the first native-born American to receive international fame for his songs and, before the rise of Stephen Foster, the country’s most popular tunesmith. He was also a playwright, dramatist, poet, and essayist, as well as a concert musician adept at the piano, organ, and flute. Hewitt embodied the restless can-do spirit of a young America. He had grown up with the fledgling republic, and had personally witnessed some of its most important technological firsts. As a boy in August 1807, he was on hand the first time a steamboat sailed on the Hudson River. In the early 1830s he rode the first train to be pulled out of Baltimore by a locomotive, and in 1844 he was present when William Morse sent the first telegraph message from Baltimore to Washington.

Though his life would become identified with the South, Hewitt was a native Northerner. Born in New York City in 1801, he was the eldest son of John Hewitt, a prominent New York musician who had led the orchestra at the court of King George III of England before coming to America. The elder Hewitt did not want his son to follow in his musical footsteps, and apprenticed him with various tradesmen. But young Hewitt would not be ‘prenticed’ and kept running away. Finally, when he was 17, he decided he wanted a military career, and with help from some of his father’s friends, he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Hewitt could not buckle down to his studies at West Point, and when he reached the end of the program, he didn’t have the grades to graduate. When the superintendent advised him to repeat his final year, Hewitt accused him of treachery and challenged him to a duel. Others wisely intervened and the duel never occurred. Hewitt resigned from the academy, but in his own mind he was a West Point graduate.

The same year that Hewitt left West Point, his parents separated, and his father invited him to become the leading songwriter and musician for a theatrical company he had formed. Hewitt agreed to meet the troupe in Augusta, Georgia, but the enterprise never got off the ground. Soon after the company arrived in Augusta, the theater where it was to play caught fire and all their instruments and props were lost. Crestfallen, the troupe broke up. Hewitt’s father returned to New York, but Hewitt had fallen in love with the South. ‘I loved the genuine hospitality of the Southerners,’ he later wrote in his autobiography. He decided to stay in Augusta, where he opened a music store, selling instruments and giving lessons on the piano and flute.

Although Hewitt was often invited to the homes of his affluent pupils, he felt snubbed by the students’ fathers because they did not invite him to participate in their political discussions after the meal. ‘Upon being invited to dinner,’ he wrote, ‘I was expected to provide music for ladies while they gossiped, instead of joining the men in stimulating conversation.’ Hewitt attributed this ostracism to the low opinion Southerners typically held of ‘mechanics and laborers,’ which included musicians.

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Tags: Civil War Times, Music, People

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