A studio cast album was released in 1999 by Atlantic Records, and included Linda Eder, Maya Angelou, James Garner, Hootie & the Blowfish, Travis Tritt, Dr. John and Betty Buckley. Both a double-disc album was released as "The Complete Work", and a "highlights" version entitled "The Nashville Sessions". "The Nashville Sessions" charted on Billboard's Top Country Albums, eventually peaking at #48. The musical had its world premiere at the Alley Theatre, Houston, Texas, on September 16, 1998, where co-author Boyd is the Artistic Director. The production was supervised by Gregory Boyd, with musical staging by George Faison and staging by Nick Corley. The cast featured Linda Eder, Keith Byron Kirk, Beth Leavel, Jesse Lenat, Capathia Jenkins, Matt Bogart, and Michael Lanning. The musical premiered on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on April 22, 1999 and closed on June 13, 1999, running for 61 performances and 35 previews. Directed by Jerry Zaks with musical staging by Luis Perez, the cast featured Leavel as Mabel/Mrs. Bixby, Kirk as Frederick Douglass, Bogart as Private Sam Taylor, Gilles Chiasson, Capathia Jenkins, David M. Lutken, Irene Molloy, and Leo Burmester as Autolycus Fell. The musical toured in the United States, starting in January 2000 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The original cast of 28 had been reduced to 15. "Rather than playing individual characters, they all play everyman - a soldier, a wife, a nurse, a girlfriend, a slave." Stephen Rayne directed, with a cast that included Larry Gatlin alternating with John Schneider and BeBe Winans. The Civil War was one of the productions produced at the newly renovated Ford's Theatre, running from March 27, 2009 through May 24. Directed by Jeff Calhoun, the 16-member cast featured Jarrod Emick, Eleasha Gamble, Michael Lanning and Timothy Shew, with the recorded voice of Hal Holbrook as Lincoln. The production is conceived in a concert setting. In 2006, a new version of the musical opened at the Majestic Theatre in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Called For the Glory: The Civil War Musical in Gettysburg, it featured two new songs and a new structure.
Songs
;Act 1
A House Divided – The Citizens
Freedom's Child – Frederick Douglass and Abolitionists
By The Sword / Sons of Dixie – The Armies
Tell My Father – Private Sam Taylor
The Peculiar Institution – The Enslaved
If Prayin' Were Horses – Clayton Toler and Bessie Toler
Greenback – Autolycus Fell, Mabel and Violet
Missing You – Sarah McEwen
Judgment Day – Captain Billy Pierce, Captain Emmett Lochran, Private Sam Taylor and The Armies
Father, How Long? – Clayton Toler
Someday – Harriet Jackson, Bessie Toler and Others
I'll Never Pass This Way Again – Corporal Henry Stewart
How Many Devils? – The Armies
;Act 2
Virginia – Captain Billy Pierce
Candle in the Window – Harriet Jackson
Oh! Be Joyful! – Autolycus Fell, Sergeant Byron Richardson, Private Conrad Bock and Private Elmore Hotchkiss
The Hospital – Mrs. Bixby, Nurse, Union Soldiers and Clayton Toler
If Prayin' Were Horses – Clayton Toler and Bessie Toler
Last Waltz for Dixie – Captain Billy Pierce and Confederate Soldiers
The Glory – Captain Emmett Lochran, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Reynolds and Full Company
Response
The Variety review of the Alley Theatre production said that the show was not "a traditional musical as a revue-style presentation of a song cycle. Wildhorn and co-creators Jack Murphy and Gregory Boyd impose precious little narrative structure on 'The Civil War', preferring instead to integrate individual, self-contained vignettes as elements in a thematically consistent but essentially bookless concert". The production uses "rear-screen projections of photos, paintings and letters evoke the period setting". It was panned by critics, including The New York Times, which found it "generic...without plot and essentially without character". The song Tell My Father, originating from the musical, was adapted into a choir piece by Andrea Ramsey and continues to be performed by male choirs, separated from its original work.
