An Introduction to America’s Music

46 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR

on broadsides and in newspapers during these years provide a window on the

founding of the American republic.

Broadside ballads were based not only on traditional ballads but on any tune

the public might know. John Dickinson’s “Liberty Song” (LG 2.1), printed in the

Boston Gazette in July 1768, was a takeoff on “Heart of Oak,” a song written in 1759 to

commemorate an English naval victory over France during the Seven Years’ War.

As the offi cial march even today of both the British Royal Nav y and the Canadian

Nav y, “Heart of Oak” bursts with patriotic pride, as the opening illustrates:

Come, cheer up, my lads, ’tis to glory we steer,

To add something more to this wonderful year;

To honour we call you, as freemen not slaves,

For who are so free as the sons of the waves?

Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men,

We always are ready;

Steady, boys, steady!

We’ll fi ght and we’ll conquer again and again.

Dickinson, a Pennsylvanian, struck a nerve when he fi red a parody of “Heart of

Oak” back at the British. Here is Dickinson’s opening:

Come, join Hand in Hand, brave americans all,

And rouse your bold hearts to fair liberty’s Call;

No tyrannous Acts shall suppress your just Claim,

Or stain with Dishonour america’s Name.

In freedom we’re born, and in freedom we’ll live.

Our Purses are ready,

Steady, Friends, Steady,

Not as slaves but as freemen our money we’ll give.

Dickenson’s thrust inspired a counterattack. In September 1768 the same Bos-

ton newspaper printed a loyalist version of “Heart of Oak” upholding the British

cause and attacking the patriots:

Come shake your dull Noddles, ye Pumpkins and bawl,

And own that you’re mad at fair Liberty’s Call,

No scandalous Conduct can add to your Shame.

Condemn’d to Dishonour. Inherit the same—

In Folly you’re born, and in Folly you’ll live,

To Madness still ready,

And stupidly steady.

Not as Men, but as Monkies, the Tokens you give.

Today, the words and music cannot convey the emotional bite that these text-

and-tune combinations must have carried in 1768. Dickinson’s pro-American

version takes a familiar, much-loved song and twists its meaning, while the

loyalist version ridicules the new meaning with antipatriot venom. Bostonians

would have been aware of how the patriot version turned an anthem of British

self-congratulation into an indictment of Britain’s policies, while the loyalist ver-

sion implied that England, victor over a powerful European rival, could easily

dismiss a minor family disturbance. In both cases, the melody and its associa-

tions gave an edge to political expression.

LG 2.1

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