KINGDOM COMING

“Kingdom Coming“ (. “Year of Jubilo“), words and music by Henry Clay Work (1832-1884), published by Chicago’s George Root & Cady in 1862, became one of the most popular and memorable songs to emerge during the American Civil War. Though the song is decidedly pro-Union, it was often heard being played in both camps. Derisively sung from the perspective of his slaves, the lyrics tell of their ’massa’ who has fled the plantation in a panic after seeing smoke from up river as the Union gunboats approach. Finding themselves suddenly on their own, they seize the opportunity to capture the plantation’s harsh overseer and lock him in a smokehouse cellar. In the meantime, expecting their imminent liberation by the advancing Yankees, they move into the “massa’s parlor“ and help themselves to his food and drink while they laugh about how fat he is, his rank in a local rebel militia, and how he may pretend to be a runaway slave to avoid capture by the Yankees. Henry Clay Work was a true ’Connecticut Yankee’. Born in Middletown CT in 1832, he was raised in an ardently abolitionist family whose home was a stop on the famous ’Underground Railroad’ that helped runaway slaves find freedom and safety in Canada. A self-taught musician, his ’day job’ was as a type-setter and printer for the music publisher, Root & Cady, who published his first song in 1853, “We Are Coming, Sister Mary“, later made popular by the famous Christy Minstrels. Work is best known for his patriotic Civil War songs, such as “Kingdom Coming“, “Grafted Into the Army“, “Babylon Is Fallen“, “Corporal Schnapps“, and his most popular, “Marching Through Georgia“, in 1865, which sold an unprecedented million sheet-music copies. In the years following the war, he went on to write a few that in one form or another have continued into the 21st century: “The Ship That Never Returned“, which later became the “MTA Song“, or “My Grandfather’s Clock“ (1875).