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| James Corbett Morris, known as Jimmy Driftwood, plays his homemade guitar. |
Arkansas folk singers and songwriters have a long tradition
of using American history to connect with audiences. Among Arkansas’s most
famous folk singer-songwriters is Jimmy Driftwood, who traveled the U.S. with
his homemade guitar in the early 1960s.
Some of Driftwood’s songs used little-known historical events.
For example, the song, “He Had a Long Chain On,” tells the story of a boy who
awakened to a stranger outside his window. The stranger looked sad and wore a long
chain. In the song, the stranger refuses help removing the chain, saying “I
guess we had best let it be.” He then walks into the wilderness dragging the
chain behind him.
Driftwood said the song was about people who opposed joining
sides during the Civil War. These men wanted nothing to do with the war, and
many joined secret societies, called “peace societies,” for protection. Peace societies
used elaborate hand gestures and verbal passwords to identify members. A member
might say “It was a very dark night” and another would answer “Not as dark as
it will be in the morning.”
Members of the societies used the passwords and gestures
because they were targets.
In November 1861, Sam Leslie, a prominent citizen of Wiley’s
Cove Township in Searcy County, wrote Gov. Henry Rector to complain about a peace
society in his community. Rector then demanded society members be sent to
Little Rock, “where they will be dealt with, as enemies of their country whose
peace and safety is being endangered by their disloyal and treasonable
acts.”
Confederate militias rounded up suspected peace society
members across north-central Arkansas. Men were chained and marched for up to
six days to Little Rock to stand trial for treason. Society members who didn’t
escape were forced to enlist in the Confederate army or stand trial. Most enlisted
and later deserted. Men who went to trial were acquitted and sent back home.
The marches are largely forgotten, but as a child, Driftwood’s
parents told him stories about them. His mother told him the man with the long
chain might come to visit if Driftwood misbehaved. Later, Driftwood incorporated
those stories and histories into his music. As a school teacher, he wrote folk
music to teach history to school children. Driftwood continued to teach, write,
perform and support folk music in Arkansas for decades. When he died in 1998,
he left behind a legacy of music that continues to captivate audiences and
preserve history.
