"HAIL! COLUMBIA" | The favorite new Federal Song Adapted to the Presidents March. [Philadelphia: B. Carr's Musical Repository, 1798]

"HAIL! COLUMBIA"

The favorite new Federal Song Adapted to the Presidents March. [Philadelphia: B. Carr's Musical Repository, 1798]

2 engraved music sheets (13 x 9 1/4 in.; 330 x 235 mm). First leaf with a mounted engraved roundel portrait of President John Adams centered on the title above the inscription "Behold the Chief who now commands!"; disbound, some browning and offsetting, minor marginal chipping far outside plate-marks.

The very rare first issue of "Hail! Columbia," America's first national song and until the late nineteenth century, the de facto national anthem of the United States. We have only been able to trace one other copy of the first issue, in the Music Division, Library of Congress.

The tune of "Hail! Columbia" was adapted from "The President's March" (sometimes called "Washington's March"), which was composed Philip Phile, a German-born violinist who played in various New York theaters and orchestras. His march was first performed in Trenton, New Jersey, on 21 April 1789, as president-elect George Washington made his way from Mount Vernon to New York for the nation's first presidential inauguration. The music was published by 1793 and was widely known shortly thereafter. The lyrics, by Joseph Hopkinson, were not added until 1798, and the song was popularized by the singer-actor Gilbert Fox.

Hopkinson's lyrics reference Washington both explicitly ("Sound sound the trump of fame | Let Washingtons great name | Ring thro the world with loud applause"; stanza 3) and, seemingly, implicitly ("Behold the Chief who now commands | Once more to serve his Country stands"; stanza 4), so it is not surprising that copies of the sheet music are known with a portrait of the first, rather than the second, president. In fact, for a century and half after the song first appeared, only the issue with Washington's portrait was known, apart from a very few copies of a variant that bore an engraving of the federal eagle. 

In a brilliantly prescient article from the beginning of the twentieth century, Oscar Sonneck, head of the Music Division, Library of Congress and a pioneering bibliographer of secular music, argued that there ought to exist a first issue of "The favorite new Federal Song" with a portrait of John Adams. Sonneck's contention was that when Carr first advertised this edition of "Hail! Columbia" in the 27 April 1798 issue of Philadelphia's Porcupine's Gazette as "ornamented with a very elegant Portrait of the President," the president was in fact John Adams. The song was advertised to be published on 30 April and was advertised as actually published on 2 May.

On 4 July 1798, with the foment of the Quasi-War with France dominating national affairs, President Adams asked George Washington to again accept a commission as Commander in Chief of the United States military, and it was only after this date, Sonneck posited, that Carr would have issued the sheet music with Washington's portrait above the legend "Behold the Chief who now commands!" Sonneck's surmise was proven correct by the subsequent appearance of at least two copies, including the present, of the first edition of "Hail! Columbia" with a portrait of President John Adams.

More recently, Myron Gray, who views the song as supporting Federalist interests, has claimed that Sonneck's contention that "Hail! Columbia" was a non-partisan patriotic song needs revision, but he fully accepts Sonneck's granting primacy of publication to the Adams issue of the song.

REFERENCES

Oscar Sonneck, "The First Edition of 'Hail Columbia,'" in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 40 (1916): 426–35; Myron Gray, "A Partisan National Song: The Politics of “Hail Columbia” Reconsidered," in the online journal Music & Politics 11 (2017)