To celebrate the Fourth of July in 1846, American poet and journalist Walt Whitman composed a new lyric to be sung to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Writing alternate lyics to the anthem melody is an American tradition. As musical commentary on the issues and ideas of the day, they were the viral Tweets and Tik Toks of early America. I discuss this tradition in my book O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Whitman’s lyric remembered Americans who died from the brutal conditions aboard British prison ships in New York Harbor during the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). Their remains were first gathered and interred in 1808. This tragedy in U.S. history is largely forgotten today. Estimates of how many Americans died aboard these ships range from 11,500 to 18,000. Either number exceeds the total of all Americans who died on the war’s battlefields.
Ode—by Walter Whitman
To Be Sung on Fort Green; 4th of July 1846
Tune: “Star Spangled Banner”
O, God of Columbia! O, Shield of the Free! More grateful to you than the fanes of old story, Must the blood-bedewed soil, the red battle-ground, be Where our fore-fathers championed America’s glory! Then how priceless the worth of the sanctified earth, We are standing on now. Lo! The slope of its girth Where the Martyrs were buried: Nor prayers, tears, or stones, Marked their crumbled-in coffins, their white, holy bones! Say! sons of Long-Island! in legend or song, Keep ye aught of its record, that day dark and cheerless— That cruel of days—when, hope weak, the foe strong, Was seen the Serene One—still faithful, still fearless, Defending the worth of the sanctified earth, We are standing on now, Lo! The slope of its girth Where the Martyrs were buried: Nor prayers, tears, or stones, Marked their crumbled-in coffins, their white, holy bones! Oh, yes! be the answer. In memory still We have placed in our hearts, and embalmed there forever! The battle, the prison-ship, martyrs, and hill, —O, may it be preserved till those hearts death shall sever! For how priceless the worth of the sanctified earth, We are standing on now. Lo! The slope of its girth Where the Martyrs were buried: Nor prayers, tears, or stones, Marked their crumbled-in coffins, their white, holy bones! And shall not the years, as they sweep o’er and o’er, Shall they not, even here, bring the children of ages— To exult as their fathers exulted before, In the freedom achieved by our ancestral sages? And the prayer rise to heaven, with pure gratitude given And the sky by the thunder of cannon be riven? Yea! Yea! let the echo responsively roll The echo that starts from the patriot’s soul!
Sources: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 2, 1846, 2; see The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, vol. 1, 22–23. The song was reprinted in the Daily Eagle on June 15, 1900 and in the Eagle’s “Walt Whitman Centenary Number,” May 31, 1919; Peter Ross’s history of Long Island credits the lyric to Walt Whitman and gives it the title Sons of Long Island. See also The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 16, 1916, 14–15.