Americans in the early decades of the United States used music to commemorate the revolutionary war and to cast contemporary political issues in revolutionary terms, articulating shared political values and calling audiences to political action. Commemoration took many forms in the post-revolutionary era. Commemorative music typically involved setting political lyrics to familiar tunes for public performance and communal singing. In Bennington, Vermont, Anthony Haswell became a local fixture of Revolutionary War commemoration and Republican activism, creating and distributing many commemorative songs from the 1780s through the 1810s. Lyrically, Haswell’s songs articulate themes of gratitude and virtue and employ revolutionary war commemoration in support of Republican politics. In the case of Haswell’s Columbians will be FREE or DIE, set to the tune of La Marseillaise, the choice of music supports the message of the song, framing domestic causes as part of an international republican movement. Commemorative songs in the 1810s gained the additional function of instructing the younger generation about Revolutionary patriotism, as seen in Haswell’s August ’77 , set to the tunes of Scotch Luck and Yankee Doodle. A close reading of the commemorative songs printed in one community demonstrates the multiple understandings of concepts such as freedom and liberty in early American politics.

Works: Anthony Haswell: The Defeat of the British in Bennington Battle, August 16, 1777 (202-3), Attention My Friends (204-5), Columbians will be FREE or DIE (207-9); Stark’s General Orders (211-12); August ’77 (213-14).

Sources: Traditional: Malbrook (202-3), Derry Down (204-5, 211-12), Scotch Luck (213-14), Yankee Doodle (213-14); Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle: La Marseillaise (207-9).

Index Classifications: 1700s, 1800s

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet