Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/83

 widely accepted as a national anthem, and then came two more paraphrases in St. George Tucker's attempt to requisition it for the Confederacy in The Southern Cross and in Oliver Wendell Holmes's added stanza.

Here are three types, the common factor being that the music always provided the pattern for the words. Yankee Doodle was a sort of ballad, loaded on a music vehicle which has rolled through the decades without its burden. Hail Columbia, written for a march tune, was made public in propitious circumstances and achieved an immediate vogue, but is seldom sung today except to fill out a program. The Star Spangled Banner, set to an old convivial song, with a range that demands the exhilaration of the cup, has been granted long life on account of its official recognition; yet it successfully defies vocal assault by any mixed group. America, the fourth permanently national song, casually written in 1832 by the youthful S. F. Smith, was set to an English tune of ninety years' standing encountered in a German song book lent him by Lowell Mason. This, therefore, though simple and popular, was no more indigenous than Yankee Doodle or The Star Spangled Banner. In recognition of these facts an attempt was made in 1861 to elicit a national hymn by means of a public competition for a substantial prize. The committee of award accepted their duty with misgivings, reluctant "to assume the function of deciding for their fellow-citizens a question which it seemed to them could really be settled only by general consent and the lapse of time." Their fears were realized, and they exercised the right they had reserved to make no award.

In the meanwhile general consent was being given to a song and to a hymn which are more and more popular with the lapse of time. These are Dixie and The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The original Dixie was composed on forty-eight hours’ notice by Dan D. Emmett in September, 1859. He was then under contract with Bryant’s Minstrels, New York, as musician and composer of "negro melodies and plantation walk—arounds." On a bleak northern Sunday he composed this "rush order" around the showman’s autumnal and winter saying, "I wish I was in Dixie." The rollicking measure scored a natural success with every audience, and the sentiment reinforced its appeal in the South. Sung late in 1860 and early