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Sometime prior to this,  Walter Kittredge  came to Lynn for a visit, evidently finding Asa's family there.  "[O]n my way back to my home,"  he said,  "I met a friend who told me that I had been drafted to go to the war, in a drawing that had occurred in our town while I was away."  That evening at home, Kittredge's thoughts and feelings found expression, as words and music came together.

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"The first time I sung 'Tenting',"  said Kittredge,  "was at Lowell, in the fall of 1863.   I was there for a week or more, giving concerts, and the first decisive encore it received was from a policeman.   I remember him well.  He was standing by, and listened attentively to the song.  He went away and came back with a brother officer, and asked me to sing 'Tenting' again.  During the week I think he must have sent every officer on the force to hear me sing that song."

Returning to High Rock, Kittredge found Asa at home once again.   He sang his new song, and Asa wanted to learn it.   "I sat out on the piazza all one afternoon,"  he said,  "teaching it to Asa.  They all sang it subsequently at an open air concert at High Rock, and its success was confirmed."

Now, just before John got home, Asa, Lizzie, and Freddy came back from a tour of Cape Cod.  Asa proposed that their companies give concerts together on the summit of High Rock, and John agreed.  Fanny, Henry, and Viola came down from Mont Vernon.  Then the Hutchinson Family, with Jack Whitcomb, prepared for a series of inexpensive entertainments before very large audiences.

Walter Kittredge may not have been as confident about his new song as he sounded, for subsequently he offered to sell it to Oliver Ditson for only fifteen dollars.  Ditson turned him down  -  even at this low price  -  saying there were enough war songs.

On April 5, 1864, Kittredge wrote a letter to Asa asking him to propose to Ditson that he publish "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground."  Asa, who was in New York at this time, did so two days later; and on the 9th, Ditson replied, agreeing to publish the song.  The score sold 10,000 copies in the first two months after it was released.

In the fall, the combined Hutchinson families made a series of appearances in Boston.   Then the two companies separated, and Jack Whitcomb left to join the Peak Family.  John's group traveled west while Asa's family took a more southerly route.

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Asa's company was having great success with material by outside songwriters  -  "The Battle Cry of Freedom,"   "Kingdom Coming,"  and "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground."  Their programs included some of the best popular songs of the era.  An original piece that he published in 1863,  "Close His Eyes, His Work Is Done,"  had a particularly long life.  Members of the Hutchinson Family performed Asa's song for decades.

John's group started 1864 with a long string of concerts through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York State, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.  At Washington, they once again visited the White House.

Frank Carpenter was then making his famous painting of Lincoln's first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet.  "Mr. Carpenter was as a brother to my father,"  said Viola,  "and I called him Uncle.  The state dining room at the White House was his studio, and I was privileged to run in at any suitable time to watch the work and chat with the artist.  The colored door keepers all knew me, and allowed me to pass without a question."

Later, John's company gave concerts in Philadelphia and nearby places.  Over the next couple months, they sang their way home through New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

Little information comes to us about Asa's activities in 1864.  John's company was quite busy all year, and we may surmise that Asa's group was in heavy demand as well.  The Tribe of Asa gave concerts in Williamsburgh, New York, in April, and they may have been on their way home to Lynn from a tour at the time.  It is known that late in the year they were traveling in the West.  Ira C. Stockbridge was a member of this lineup as was Caleb's daughter, Susan M. Hutchinson, who sang and played guitar.

A tour by either of the main groups could be quite long.   On September 23, John's family started a trip from Massachusetts to Minneapolis and beyond, down the Mississippi to St. Louis, and then back along a different route to Lynn, where they would arrive nine-and-a-half months later.

Soprano Morgiana Porter, Fanny's niece, joined the company.   John called her  "Cousin Maud."   Viola sang contralto, giving her voice a particularly important role in the family quartets.  By this time, Henry was singing bass.  The first leg of this tour took them from Massachusetts through Rhode Island, and Connecticut.  They crossed New York State quickly, making only one stop, and were soon giving concerts in various parts of Ohio.

As active as the Hutchinsons were in the 1860 movement that swept Republicans into power and Abraham Lincoln into the White House, their records are curiously silent about campaigning on behalf of candidates in 1864.  We know, though, that their name was invoked often in speeches.  General McClellan, a neighbor of the Pattons in Orange, was a presidential candidate; and politicians speaking for Lincoln would get a laugh by observing that, while McClellan was never able to push back the Confederate army, he did manage to drive away the Hutchinsons.

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John's group sang their way through Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, reaching Minnesota late in November.  On December 3, they made a perilous journey across the prairie in a blizzard.  Evidently Viola and Morgiana were unaware of the risk; for they were riding in the back, loudly giggling and generally making noise.  They arrived in Hutchinson the next day.  The group continued on its tour until it reached Red Wing, when Henry grew tired of giving concerts and returned to Hutchinson alone.  He bought an ax and soon went about chopping cord wood.

On December 28, Brother Asa had a memorable experience in St. Louis.  Now, back in 1851, the Hutchinson Family had been denied a hall on account of the radical character of their shows.  Since then, attitudes and leadership in Missouri had changed, evidently a lot; and the people of St. Louis made a noble effort to make up to Asa for that unfortunate incident.  John wrote:

Early 1865 found John in the Midwest.   As was often the case for the Hutchinson Family, their itinerary amounts to a long list of towns and cities.  After this leg of the tour, with its frequent stops for concerts, the trio made its way into Missouri.  Their concerts in St. Louis were well attended; and, like Asa a few months earlier, John and the members of his company were shown great courtesy.

The pleasure of this reception was offset by an unfortunate incident.  Somehow John managed to lose $800 in one lump-sum from his pocket while in St. Louis.  Sadder but wiser, he led his company through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, giving concerts all along the way.

One afternoon at the close of the war, Oliver Dennett Hutchinson stepped out to buy firecrackers.  The Tribe of Asa was on tour in Ohio, and normally Dennett would be catching some sleep at this point in the day so he could be wide awake to the end of the evening's concert.  But this day was different, as news had arrived of the fall of Richmond.

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A large crowd had gathered in the public square.   Dennett was on his way back to the hotel, when he heard a loud noise from the crowd.  Someone shouted, "Everything is lovely and the goose hangs high!"  Dennett looked back while negotiating a corner, and he fell into a gutter, giving his right arm a nasty compound fracture.  He was helped to his feet and delivered to the hotel.  Next, his arm was set.  Badly.

Dennett's arm was crooked and stiff, so he was sent to a specialist in orthopedic medicine at New Bedford where he stayed with his aunt, Susan Chace Kelley.  Dennett spoke of this visit to the Kelley home as "delightfully pleasant."  But his experience with the bone doctors fell far short of that mark.

It was after a few weeks' treatment that the bone specialists suddenly and without warning broke Dennett's arm again and re-set it.  Dennett called this operation unsuccessful.  A good number of photos from early in the war still exist, showing Dennett and his brother Fred playing military-style drums.  It was not until Dennett returned to drumming that his still-crooked arm finally limbered up.  Until the end of his days, he had trouble with his handwriting, with sports, and much more.  Yet, it was this fractured arm that gave Dennett his best, light-hearted claim to being a Civil War casualty.

The Hutchinsons must have been thrilled on April 9 when Lee surrendered to Grant.  The year of the great jubilee  -  emancipation  -  had come and gone, and the hard-fought American Civil War was coming to an end.  Then joy turned to grief five days later, when John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in the head at Ford's Theatre in Washington.  The president died the following morning.

John was in Hudson, Ohio, when he learned of Lincoln's death.   His party took the train for Cleveland.  "Here groups of men were everywhere gathered,"  said John,  "discussing the nation's sorrow.  Meetings were held and speeches made, full of patriotism and vengeance.  We gave no concert that night.  We could not sing, for we had no heart to do it."

W. Milton Clark, a bass, took Henry's place.   John reported that it was more than a month before the group left Ohio.   They proceeded into Pennsylvania, where they experienced particular success; and they kept on into New York State.  On the Fourth of July, John and Milton Clark sang at a celebration in Fulton and then started for Lynn, where they arrived on July 7.

John's account of this trip suggests that,  at the end of the Civil War,  the Hutchinsons were in great demand.  After settling with his singers,  he had a profit of $5,000.

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When John got home,  he saw that the observatory on the summit of High Rock was gone.   It was set on fire the night that news came of Lee's surrender.