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From the Colonial Era to 1900
Most wars fought by the United States, until the early twenty-first century, have been accompanied by music for those who are the supporters, either on the battlefield or the home front. But there have always been those who have expressed their opposition to the fighting with their own tunes and songsâagain, from both the battlefield and the home front. Such songs in fact pre-date the establishment of the United States; for instance, we can go back to the Seven Yearsâ War of 1756â63 (also called the French and Indian War) for the lament of a poor Irish dragoon, âFelix the Soldier,â who loses his leg in the service of an imperial war that he does not understand. His livelihood as a peat harvester destroyed forever, he will return home to a life of dissolution and destitution similar to that faced by the maimed veterans of many subsequent wars:
I will bid my spade adieu,
For I cannot dig the bog,
But I still can play a fiddle
And I still can drink my grog.
Songs such as âFelix the Soldierâ also establish the abiding class struggle encapsulated in the phrase, ârich manâs war, poor manâs fight.â Such musical protests are admittedly swamped by the out-pouring of jingoistic and patriotic tub-thumpers that normally accompany military conflicts. Such was the case with the Seven Yearsâ War in America, in which songs glorifying the British general James Wolfe far outnumber those of any other subjects.1
The War of Independence (1775â83) also prompted depictions of the poor soldier whose lower-class status is rubbed into his nose and for whom the glory of war quickly tarnishesâespecially here, in âThe Yankeeâs Return from Camp,â when the narrator measures his condition against that of his commander, George Washington:
And there was Captain Washington,
And gentle folks about him;
They say heâs grown so tarnal proud
He will not ride without them.
For the unnamed Yankee, enough becomes enough when he confronts a vision of his own likely destination:
I see another snarl of men,
A-digging graves they told me,
So tarnal long, so tarnal deep,
They âtended they should 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 motherâs chamber.
This song had a Loyalist counterpart, which, though written from the perspective of a British regular, proved popular with the American troops who shared his war-weariness and his recollections of comradeship during the Seven Yearsâ War:
I am a jolly soldier,
Enlisted years ago,
To serve my king and country
Against the common foe.
But when across thâ Atlantic
My orders were to go,
I grieved to think that English hearts
Should draw their swords on those
Who fought and conquered by their side When
Frenchmen were their foes.
Did they who bloody measures crave,
Our toil and danger share,
Not one to face the rifle-men,
A second time would dare.
Ye Britons who your country love,
Be this your ardent prayer:
To Britain and her colonies,
May peace be soon restored,
And knaves of high and low degree,
Be destined to the cord.2
Colonial songwriters frequently employed parody in order to drive home a message that might avert further bloodshed. Thus, one Oliver Arnold of Norwich, Connecticut, chose in 1775 to adapt a familiar ballad, âThe Banks of the Dee,â in an argument both for peace and for fair taxation by Great Britainâon Scotland, rather than on the struggling American colonies at the mercy of invading Scottish regiments:
Be quiet and sober, secure and contented:
Upon your own land, be valiant and free;
Bless God, that the war is so nicely prevented,
And till the green fields on the banks of the Dee.
The Dee then will flow, all its beauty displaying,
The lads on its banks will again be seen playing,
And England thus honestly taxes defraying,
With natural drafts from the banks of the Dee.3
Peace songs could of course be used for propaganda purposes by factions actually committed to military action. Such was the case with a highly popular ballad, âThe Dying Redcoatâ (sometimes titled âThe British Lamentationâ), supposedly penned by a British sergeant suffering from a mortal wound incurred in the Battle for New York in September 1776:
A garden place it was indeed,
And in it grew many a bitter weed,
Which will pull down our highest hopes
And sorely wound our British troops.
âTis now September the seventeenth day,
I wish Iâd never come to America;
Full fifteen thousand has been slain,
Bold British heroes every one.
Now Iâve received my mortal wound,
I bid farewell to Old Englandâs ground;
My wife and children will mourn for me,
Whilst I lie cold in America.
As Irwin Silber noted, the songâs final stanza suggests that rebel propagandists may have appropriated this song and added a final, highly improbable verse:
Fight on, Americaâs noble sons,
Fear not Britanniaâs thundering guns.
Maintain your rights from year to year,
Godâs on your side, you need not fear.
Other songs utilized the imagery of wartime destruction in an ambiguous manner, as likely to encourage further military action as lobbying for peace. Thus, the celebrated composer, William Billingsâwhose anthem, âChester,â was second only to âYankee Doodleâ in contemporary popularityâadapted the 137th Psalm for his âLamentation over Boston,â a city bombarded by both the British and the American troops during the siege of 1776:
By the Rivers of Watertown we sat down and wept,
We wept, we wept, we wept
When we remembered thee, O Boston;
As for our Friends, Lord God of Heaven,
Preserve them, defend them, deliver them
And restore them unto us;
Preserve them, defend them and restore them to us again.
For they that held them in Bondage
Required of them to take up arms against their brethren.
Forbid it, Lord God, forbid!
Forbid it, Lord God that those who have sucked Bostonian Breasts
Should thirst for American Blood!4
Inevitably, perhaps, the majority of peace songs came from the pens of Loyalists, for whom independence would mean the upset of an established and familiar way of life. Some, like the anonymous composer of âA Prayer/Common Prayer for the Timesâ (1776), called for the restoration of peace at any cost, even though he or she could acknowledge that âBritanniaâs sinsâ were at the root of the conflict:
Since we are taught in Scripture word
To pray for friends and foes;
Then let us pray for George the Third,
Who must be one of those.
Heaven bless America, and Britain,
May folly past suffice,
Wherein they have each other smitten,
Who ought to harmonize.
Allied by blood, and interest too,
Soon let them re-unite,
May Heaven tyrannic minds subdue,
Haste, haste the pleasing sight.
In contrast, the Loyalist newspaper, the Pennsylvania Ledger, printed âAn Irregular Ode to Peaceâ that squarely lay the blame for the strife at the rebelsâ door:
But now we see the proud Usurpersâ aim:
Thoâ Libertyâs dear name is heard each hour,
The poor manâs property and good manâs fame
Alike are victims to their lawless powâr.
However, for an anonymous âDaughter of Liberty, living in Massachusetts,â what mattered most was an end to âthe Distressing Situation of Every Sea-Port Townâ where women and children were as much the victims as were the soldiers in the field:
We canât get fire nor yet food,
Takes 20 weight of sugar for two foot of wood,
We cannot get bread nor yet meat,
We see the world is nought but cheat.
For sin is all the cause of this,
We must not take it then amiss,
Wanât it for our polluted tongues
This cruel war would neâer begun.
We should hear no fife nor drum,
Nor training bands would never come:
Should we go on our sinful course,
Times will brow on us worse and worse.
The gracious GOD now cause to cease,
This bloody war and give us peace!
And down our streets send plenty then
With hearts as one weâll say Amen.5
The signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally ended the American War of Independence. The first president, George Washington, strove to keep the new nation out of any foreign conflicts, resolutely abjuring the âentangling alliancesâ that would lead to war. However, even during Washingtonâs first term, nervous critics eyed the new ambassador to Great Britain, John Adams, in fear of the latterâs supposed âmonarchicalâ tendencies, which might upset the fledgling peace. Hence âA New Songâ as it was published in the Pennsylvania Packet of August 20, 1787:
But let us no longer to Adams attend,
But âgainst his king projects our country defend;
Letâs support our Congress with might and with main,
And treaties observe with France, Holland and Spain.
Adams in fact proved skillful in averting American conflicts with the European powers, especially during his presidency of 1797â1801, when he succeeded in avoiding all-out war with Napoleonic France (against the clamor of hawks within his own Federalist party). A celebratory ode, âAdams and Liberty,â written by Thomas Paine (not the same Paine who authored Common Sense and the Rights of Man), paints Adams as the savior of the peace:
While France her huge limbs bathes recumbent in blood,
And societyâs base threats with wide dissolution;
May Peace, like the dove who returned from the flood,
Find an ark of abode in our mild Constitution.6
As the nineteenth century got under way, American merchant ships were caught between the warring navies of France and Britain, mounting a grave threat to American neutrality. Each power attempted to blockade American ships to disrupt US trade with the other; in addition, British naval officers would order the capture and impressment of US sailors into the Royal Navy. American hawks clamoring for war were handed a gift in June of 1807 when the British vessel Leopard attacked the American Chesapeake in US waters and hauled four suspected British deserters off the ship. That year, President Thomas Jefferson recommended an embargo on all US merchant shipping in a bid to avoid military entanglement; Congress enacted the embargo that year (against the objections of merchants and manufacturers across the country). Jeffersonâs supporters sang, in âEmbargo and Peace,â
From the deep we withdraw till the tempest be past,
Till our flag can protect each American cargo;
While British ambitionâs dominion shall last,
Let us join, heart and hand, to support the embargo:
For embargo and peace
Will promote our increase;
Then embargoed weâl...