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Hail Columbia.
The editor has in his library the first edition of this song, entitled "The Favorite new Federal Song, adapted to the President's March." It was published in 1798 in this version, but its melody was composed nine years before the words. In the writing of a song the words are first written and the music composed to fit them; in the case of "Hail Columbia" this process was reversed."The President's March" was composed in honor of Washington, when he went to New York, in 1789, to be inaugurated the first President of the United States. It was probably the work of a German musician, resident in Philadelphia, named Johannes Roth, although it is also claimed for another German, in the same city, named Phylo. It existed as a march until 1798. In that year a young actor named Gilbert Fox was to take a benefit at a theatre. We will let Judge Hopkinson tell the story of the evo�lution of the song.
"The theatre was then open in our city. A young man belonging to it whose talent was high as a sing�er, was about to take a benefit. I had known him when he was at school. On this acquaintance he called on me one Saturday afternoon, his benefit being announced for the following Monday. His prospects were very disheartening; but he said that if he could get a patriotic song adapted to 'The President's March' he did not doubt of a full house; that the poets of the theatrical corps had been trying to ac�complish it but had not succeeded. I told him I would try what I could do for him. He came the next af�ternoon, and the song, such as it is, was ready for him."
A new patriotic song was held to be of the greatest importance in the early years of our republic,and the theatre was therefore crowded when Gilbert Fox launched the addition to the national repertoire. It was the rallying cry of the National party. In those days the "Federalists" held that the Nation should ev�er be supreme authority, while the "Anti-Federalists" believed that state rights should come first."Hail Cor lumbia" was doubly a national song in that it was the anthem of the Federalists. |
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