Immortal Songs of Camp and Field

Louis Albert Banks

Immortal Songs of Camp and Field / The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking Anecdotes connected with their History

THE AMERICAN FLAG

When Freedom, from her mountain height,Unfurled her standard to the air,She tore the azure robe of night,And set the stars of glory there!She mingled with its gorgeous dyesThe milky baldric of the skies,And striped its pure celestial whiteWith streakings of the morning light;Then, from his mansion in the sun,She called her eagle bearer down,And gave into his mighty handThe symbol of her chosen land!Majestic monarch of the cloud!Who rear’st aloft thy regal form,To hear the tempest trumpings loud,And see the lightning-lances driven,When stride the warriors of the stormAnd rolls the thunder-drum of heaven!Child of the sun! To thee ’tis givenTo guard the banner of the free,To hover in the sulphur smoke,To ward away the battle stroke,And bid its blendings shine afarLike rainbows on the cloud of war,The harbingers of Victory.Flag of the brave! Thy folds shall fly,The sign of hope and triumph high!When speaks the signal trumpet toneAnd the long line comes gleaming on(Ere yet the life-blood warm and wetHas dimmed the glistening bayonet),Each soldier eye shall brightly turnTo where thy sky-born glories burn,And, as his springing steps advance,Catch war and vengeance from the glance.And when the cannon mouthing cloudHeaves in wild wreaths the battle shroud,And gory sabres rise and fall,Like shoots of flame on midnight’s pall;There shall thy meteor-glances glow,And cowering foes shall shrink beneathEach gallant arm that strikes belowThat lovely messenger of death.Flag of the seas! On ocean waveThy stars shall glitter o’er the brave;When death, careering on the gale,Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,And frighted waves rush wildly backBefore the broadside’s reeling rack,Each dying wanderer of the seaShall look at once to heaven and thee,And smile to see thy splendors flyIn triumph o’er his closing eye.Flag of the free heart’s hope and home,By angel hands to valor given;Thy stars have lit the welkin domeAnd all thy hues were born in heaven!As fixed as yonder orb divine,That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled,Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine,The guard and glory of the world.– Joseph Rodman Drake.

The author of The American Flag was born to poverty, but by hard work he obtained a good education, and studied medicine under Dr. Nicholas Romayne, by whom he was greatly beloved. He obtained his degree and shortly afterward, in October, 1816, he was married to Sarah Eckford, who brought him a good deal of wealth. Two years later, his health failing, he visited New Orleans for the winter, hoping for its recovery. He returned to New York in the spring, only to die in the following autumn, September, 1820, at the age of twenty-five. He is buried at Hunt’s Point, in Westchester County, New York, where he spent some of the years of his boyhood. On his monument are these lines, written by his friend, Fitz-Green Halleck, —

“None knew him but to love him,Nor named him but to praise.”

Drake was a poet from his childhood. The anecdotes preserved of his early youth show the fertility of his imagination. His first rhymes were a conundrum which he perpetrated when he was but five years old. He was one day, for some childish offense, punished by imprisonment in a portion of the garret shut off by some wooden bars. His sisters stole up to witness his suffering condition, and found him pacing the room, with something like a sword on his shoulder, watching an incongruous heap on the floor, in the character of Don Quixote at his vigils over the armor in the church. He called a boy of his acquaintance, named Oscar, “Little Fingal;” his ideas from books thus early seeking embodiment in living shapes. In the same spirit the child listened with great delight to the stories of an old neighbor lady about the Revolution. He would identify himself with the scene, and once, when he had given her a very energetic account of a ballad which he had read, upon her remarking that it was a tough story, he quickly replied, with a deep sigh: “Ah! we had it tough enough that day, ma’am.”

Drake wrote The Mocking-Bird, one of his poems which has lived and will live, when a mere boy. It shows not only a happy facility but an unusual knowledge of the imitative faculty in the young poets of his time.

The American Flag was written in May, 1819, when the author was not quite twenty-four. It has remained unchanged except the last four lines. It originally concluded: —

“As fixed as yonder orb divine,That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled,Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine,The guard and glory of the world.”

These lines were very unsatisfactory to Drake, and he said to Fitz-Green Halleck, “Fitz, can’t you suggest a better stanza?” Whereupon the brilliant author of Marco Bozzaris sat down and wrote in a glowing burst of inspiration the four concluding lines: —

“Forever float that standard sheet!Where breathes the foe but falls before us?With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet,And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us?”

Drake immediately agreed that these were a splendid improvement on the former ending, and incorporated them into his one poem that is certain of immortality. It was first published in the New York Evening Post, in a series known as the Croaker Pieces, The American Flag being the last one of the series.

The young poet was entirely free from vanity and affectation, and had no morbid seeking for popular applause. When he was on his deathbed, at his wife’s request, Doctor DeKay collected and copied all his poems which could be found and took them to him. “See, Joe,” said he to him, “what I have done.” “Burn them,” he replied; “they are valueless.”

Drake’s impulsive nature, as well as the spirit and force, yet simplicity, of expression, with his artless manner, gained him many friends. He had that native politeness which springs from benevolence – that would stop to pick up the hat or the crutch of an old servant, or fly to the relief of a child. His acquaintance with Fitz-Green Halleck arose in a romantic incident on the Battery one day when, in a retiring shower, the heavens were spanned by a rainbow. DeKay and Drake were together, and Halleck, a new acquaintance, was talking with them; the conversation taking the turn of some passing expression of the wishes of the moment, Halleck whimsically remarked that it would be heaven for him, just then, to ride on that rainbow and read Campbell. The idea was very pleasing to Drake. He seized Halleck by the hand and from that moment until his untimely death they were bosom friends.

ADAMS AND LIBERTY

Ye sons of Columbia, who bravely have foughtFor those rights which unstain’d from your sires had descended,May you long taste the blessings your valor has bought,And your sons reap the soil which your fathers defended!’Mid the reign of mild peace,May your nation increase,With the glory of Rome, and the wisdom of Greece.And ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.In a clime whose rich vales feed the marts of the world,Whose shores are unshaken by Europe’s commotion,The trident of Commerce should never be hurl’dTo increase the legitimate powers of the ocean.But should pirates invade,Though in thunder array’d,Let your cannon declare the free charter of trade;For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.The fame of our arms, of our laws the mild sway,Had justly ennobled our nation in story,Till the dark clouds of faction obscured our young day,And enveloped the sun of American glory.But let traitors be told,Who their country have sold,And bartered their God for his image in gold,That ne’er will the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.While France her huge limbs bathes recumbent in blood,And society’s base threats with wide dissolution;May peace, like the dove who return’d from the flood,Find an ark of abode in our mild constitution.But, though peace is our aim,Yet the boon we disclaim,If bought by our sovereignty, justice, or fame;For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.’Tis the fire of the flint each American warms:Let Rome’s haughty victors beware of collision;Let them bring all the vassals of Europe in arms,We’re a world by ourselves, and disdain a provision.While with patriot prideTo our laws we’re allied,No foe can subdue us, no faction divide;For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.Our mountains are crown’d with imperial oak,Whose roots, like our liberties, ages have nourish’d;But long ere our nation submits to the yoke,Not a tree shall be left on the field where it flourish’d.Should invasion impend,Every grove would descendFrom the hilltops they shaded our shores to defend;For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.Let our patriots destroy Anarch’s pestilent worm,Lest our liberty’s growth should be check’d by corrosion;Then let clouds thicken round us: we heed not the storm;Our realm fears no shock, but the earth’s own explosion.Foes assail us in vain,Though their fleets bridge the main,For our altars and laws with our lives we’ll maintain;For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.Should the tempest of war overshadow our land,Its bolts could ne’er rend Freedom’s temple asunder;For, unmov’d, at its portal would Washington stand,And repulse with his breast the assaults of the thunder!His sword from the sleepOf its scabbard would leap,And conduct, with its point, every flash to the deep;For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.Let Fame to the world sound America’s voice;No intrigues can her sons from their government sever:Her pride is her Adams, their laws are his choice,And shall flourish till Liberty slumbers forever.Then unite heart and hand,Like Leonidas’ band,And swear to the God of the ocean and land,That ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.– Robert Treat Paine.

The father of the author of Adams and Liberty, or as it has been more usually entitled in later days, Ye Sons of Columbia, was the Robert Treat Paine who was one of the immortal signers of the Declaration of Independence. The author of this hymn was given by his parents the name of Thomas, but on account of that being the name of a notorious infidel of his time, he appealed to the legislature of Massachusetts to give him a Christian name; thereafter he took the name of his father, Robert Treat Paine.

He was a very precocious and brilliant youth. When he was seven years of age his family removed from Taunton, where he was born, to Boston, and there he prepared for Harvard College at one of the public schools, entering the freshman class in his fifteenth year. One of his classmates wrote a squib on him in verse on the college wall, and Paine, on consultation with his friends, being advised to retaliate in kind, did so, and thus became aware of the poetic faculty of which he afterward made such liberal use. He wrote nearly all his college compositions in verse, with such success that he was assigned the post of poet at the College Exhibition in the autumn of 1791, and at the Commencement in the following year. After receiving his diploma, he entered the counting-room of Mr. James Tisdale, but soon proved that his tastes did not lie in that direction. He would often be carried away by day-dreams and make entries in his day-book in poetry. On one occasion when he was sent to the bank with a check for five hundred dollars, he met some literary acquaintances on the way and went off with them to Cambridge, and spent a week in the enjoyment of “the feast of reason and the flow of soul,” returning to his duties with the cash at the end of that period.

In 1792 young Paine fell deeply in love with an actress, a Miss Baker, aged sixteen, who was one of the first players to appear in Boston. Their performances were at first called dramatic recitations to avoid a collision with a law forbidding “stage plays.” He married Miss Baker in 1794, and was promptly turned out of doors by his father.

The next year, on taking his degree of A.M. at Cambridge, he delivered a poem entitled The Invention of Letters. There was a great deal of excitement over this poem at the time, as it contained some lines referring to Jacobinism, which the college authorities crossed out, but which he delivered as written. The poem was greatly admired, and Washington wrote him a letter in appreciation of its merits. It was immediately published and large editions sold, the author receiving fifteen hundred dollars as his share of the profits, which was no doubt a very grateful return to a poet with a young wife and an obdurate father. The breach with his family, however, was afterward healed.

Mr. Paine was also the author of a poem entitled The Ruling Passion, for which he received twelve hundred dollars. Still another famous poem of his was called The Steeds of Apollo.

In 1794 he produced his earliest ode, Rise, Columbia, which, perhaps, was the seed thought from which later sprang the more extended hymn, —

“When first the sun o’er ocean glow’dAnd earth unveil’d her virgin breast,Supreme ’mid Nature’s vast abodeWas heard th’ Almighty’s dread behest:‘Rise, Columbia, brave and free,Poise the globe, and bound the sea.’”

His most famous song, Adams and Liberty, – which is sung to the same tune as Key’s Star-Spangled Banner, or Anacreon in Heaven, – was written four years later at the request of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society. Its sale yielded him a profit of more than seven hundred and fifty dollars. These receipts show an immediate popularity which has seldom been achieved by patriotic songs. In 1799 he delivered an oration on the first anniversary of the dissolution of the alliance with France which was a great oratorical triumph. The author sent a copy, after its publication, to Washington, and received a reply in which the General says: “You will be assured that I am never more gratified than when I see the effusions of genius from some of the rising generation, which promises to secure our national rank in the literary world; as I trust their firm, manly, and patriotic conduct will ever maintain it with dignity in the political.”

The next to the last stanza of Adams and Liberty was not in the song as originally written. Paine was dining with Major Benjamin Russell, when he was reminded that his song had made no mention of Washington. The host said he could not fill his glass until the error had been corrected, whereupon the author, after a moment’s thinking, scratched off the lines which pay such a graceful tribute to the First American: —

“Should the tempest of war overshadow our land,Its bolts could ne’er rend Freedom’s temple asunder;For, unmov’d, at its portal would Washington stand,And repulse with his breast the assaults of the thunder!His sword from the sleepOf its scabbard would leap,And conduct, with its point, every flash to the deep;For ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.”

Instead of being added to the hymn it was inserted as it here appears. The second, fourth, and fifth stanzas have been usually omitted in recent publications of the hymn.

The brilliant genius of Paine was sadly eclipsed by strong drink, that dire foe of many men of bright literary promise. His sun, which had risen so proudly, found an untimely setting about the beginning of the war of 1812.

YANKEE DOODLE

Father and I went down to campAlong with Captain Gooding,And there we saw the men and boys,As thick as hasty pudding.Yankee Doodle, keep it up,Yankee Doodle Dandy!Mind the music and the step,And with the gals be handy!And there we see a thousand menAs rich as Squire David,And what they wasted every day, —I wish it had been savèd.The ’lasses they eat up every dayWould keep our house all winter, —They have so much that I’ll be boundThey eat whene’er they’ve a mind to.And there we see a whopping gun,As big as a log of maple,Mounted on a little cart, —A load for father’s cattle.And every time they fired it offIt took a horn of powder,And made a noise like father’s gun,Only a nation louder.I went as near to itAs ’Siah’s underpinning;Father went as nigh agin, —I thought the devil was in him.Cousin Simon grew so bold,I thought he meant to cock it;He scared me so, I streaked it off,And hung to father’s pocket.And Captain Davis had a gunHe kind o’ clapped his hand on,And stuck a crooked stabbing-ironUpon the little end on ’t.And there I saw a pumpkin shellAs big as mother’s basin;And every time they sent one off,They scampered like tarnation.I saw a little bar’el, too,Its heads were made of leather;They knocked on it with little plugs,To call the folks together.And there was Captain Washington,With grand folks all about him;They says he’s grown so tarnal proud,He cannot ride without them.He had on his meeting-clothes,And rode a slapping stallion,And gave his orders to the men, —I guess there was a million.And then the feathers in his hat,They were so tarnal fine-ah,I wanted peskily to getTo hand to my Jemima.And then they’d fife away like funAnd play on cornstalk fiddles;And some had ribbons red as bloodAll wound about their middles.The troopers, too, would gallop up,And fire right in our faces;It scared me a’most to deathTo see them run such races.And then I saw a snarl of menA-digging graves, they told me,So tarnal long, so tarnal deep, —They allowed they were to hold me.It scared me so I hooked it off,Nor stopped as I remember,Nor turned about, till I got home,Locked up in mother’s chamber.

It is certainly the tune of Yankee Doodle, and not the words of this old song, which captured the fancy of the country and held its sway in America for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

The tune, however, is much older than that. It has been claimed in many lands. When Kossuth was in this country making his plea for liberty for Hungary, he informed a writer of the Boston Post that, when the Hungarians that accompanied him first heard Yankee Doodle on a Mississippi River steamer, they immediately recognized it as one of the old national airs of their native land, one played in the dances of that country, and they began to caper and dance as they had been accustomed to do in Hungary.

It has been claimed also in Holland as an old harvest song. It is said that when the laborers received for wages “as much buttermilk as they could drink, and a tenth of the grain,” they used to sing as they reaped, to the tune of Yankee Doodle, the words, —

“Yanker, didel, doodle down,Diddle, dudel, lanther,Yanke viver, voover vown,Botermilk und tanther.”

From Spain, also, comes a claim. The American Secretary of Legation, Mr. Buckingham Smith, wrote from Madrid under date of June 3, 1858: “The tune of Yankee Doodle, from the first of my showing it here, has been acknowledged, by persons acquainted with music, to bear a strong resemblance to the popular airs of Biscay; and yesterday, a professor from the north recognized it as being much like the ancient sword-dance played on solemn occasions by the people of San Sebastian. He says the tune varies in those provinces. The first strains are identically those of the heroic Danza Esparta of brave old Biscay.”

France puts in a claim, and declares that Yankee Doodle is an old vintage song from the southern part of that land of grapes; while Italy, too, claims Yankee Doodle for her own.

The probabilities are that it was introduced into England from Holland.

Yankee Doodle became an American institution in June, 1755. General Braddock, of melancholy fate, was gathering the colonists to an encampment near Albany for an attack on the French and Indians at Niagara. The countrymen came into camp in a medley of costumes, from the buckskins and furs of the American Indian to some quaint old-fashioned military heirloom of a century past. The British soldiers made great sport of their ragged clothes and the quaint music to which they marched. There was among these regular troops from England a certain Dr. Richard Shuckburg, who could not only patch up human bodies, but had a great facility in patching up tunes as well. As these grotesque countrymen marched into camp, this quick-witted doctor recalled the old air which was sung by the cavaliers in ridicule of Cromwell, who was said to have ridden into Oxford on a small horse with his single plume fastened into a sort of knot which was derisively called a “macaroni.” The words were, —

“Yankee Doodle came to town,Upon a Kentish pony;He stuck a feather in his cap,Upon a macaroni.”

Doctor Shuckburg at once began to plan a joke upon the uncouth newcomers. He set down the notes of Yankee Doodle, wrote along with them the lively travesty upon Cromwell, and gave them to the militia musicians as the latest martial music of England. The band quickly caught the simple and contagious air which would play itself, and in a few hours it was sounding through the camp amid the laughter of the British soldiers. It was a very prophetic piece of fun, however, which became significant a few years later. When the battles of Concord and Lexington began the Revolutionary War, the English, when proudly advancing, played along the road God save the King; but after they had been routed, and were making their disastrous retreat, the Americans followed them with the taunting Yankee Doodle.

It was only twenty-five years after Doctor Shuckburg’s joke when Lord Cornwallis marched into the lines of these same old ragged Continentals to surrender his army and his sword to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

Francis Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the father of Joseph Hopkinson, the author of Hail Columbia, adapted the words of his famous song The Battle of the Kegs, to the tune of Yankee Doodle. David Bushnell, the inventor of the torpedo, in December, 1777, had set adrift at night a large number of kegs charged with gunpowder, which were designed to explode on coming in contact with the British vessels in the Delaware. They failed in their object, but, exploding in the vicinity, created intense alarm in the fleet, which kept up for hours a continuous discharge of cannon and small arms at every object in the river. This was “the battle of the kegs.”

Verses without number have been sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle, but the ballad given here is the one that was best known and most frequently sung during the war for independence. They are said to have been written by a gentleman of Connecticut whose name has not survived. The exact date of their first publication is not known, but as these verses were sung at the Battle of Bunker Hill it must have been as early as 1775.

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER

O say, can you see by the dawn’s early light,What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming!And the rocket’s red glare,The bombs bursting in air,Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;O say, does that star-spangled banner yet waveO’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,As it fitfully blows now conceals, now discloses?Now it catches the gleamOf the morning’s first beam,In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;’Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh, long may it waveO’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!And where is that band who so vauntingly sworeThat the havoc of war and the battle’s confusionA home and a country should leave us no more?Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.No refuge could saveThe hireling and slaveFrom the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth waveO’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!Oh, thus be it ever when freemen shall standBetween their loved homes and the war’s desolation!Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued landPraise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.Then conquer we must,When our cause it is just,And this be our motto – “In God is our trust:”And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall waveO’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!– Francis Scott Key.

No song could have had a more inspiring source of creation than did this. Its author, Mr. Francis Scott Key, was a young lawyer who left Baltimore in September, 1814, while the war of 1812 was yet going on, and under a flag of truce visited the British fleet for the purpose of obtaining the release of a friend of his, a certain Doctor Beanes, who had been captured at Marlborough. After his arrival at the fleet he was compelled to remain with it during the bombardment of Fort McHenry, as the officers were afraid to permit him to land lest he should disclose the purposes of the British. Mr. Key remained on deck all night, watching every shell from the moment it was fired until it fell, and listening with breathless interest to hear if an explosion followed. The firing suddenly ceased before day, but from the position of the ship he could not discover whether the fort had surrendered or the attack had been abandoned. He paced the deck for the remainder of the night in painful suspense, watching with intense anxiety for the return of day, and looking every few minutes at his watch to see how long he must wait for it; and as soon as it dawned, and before it was light enough to see objects at a distance, his glass was turned to the fort, uncertain whether he should see there the Stars and Stripes or the flag of the enemy. At length the light came, and he saw that “our flag was still there;” and as the day advanced he discovered from the movement of the boats between the shore and the fleet that the English troops had been defeated, and that many wounded men were being carried to the ships. At length Mr. Key was informed that the attack on Baltimore had failed, and he with his friend was permitted to return home, while the hostile fleet sailed away, leaving the Star-Spangled Banner still waving from Fort McHenry.