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The National Music of America. 151
latter alternative was to humiliate the Hessians. There was no help for it. On the nineteenth of October Cornwallis's army, 7,247 in number, with 840 seamen, marched out with colours furled and cased, their bands playing an old English tune entitled "The World Turned Upside Down," which they undoubtedly thought appropriate to the occasion. The American bands now played " Yankee Doodle." *
It was a long time after this that Europe heard "Yankee Doodle" as an American anthem. After the War of 1812 this also came about. It was in 1814 that Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams met the British ambassador at Ghent to arrange the final points and to sign the treaty of peace between Great Britain and America.1 The burghers of the city were proud that
1 The treaty was signed Dec. 24, 1814. The citizens of Ghent (whose sympathies were with the Americans) rejoiced greatly. Lossing's "Fieldbook of the War of 1812," p. 1061. |
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