Ladies Patriotic Song. Engraved music. New York: G. Gilfert, 1798.
Printed fifteen years after the signing of the Treaty of Paris that officially ended the Revolutionary War, this song evokes the intensity of patriotism in former colonies. Arranged for voice and piano and intended for performance at home, the lyrics urge women to defend Columbia’s freedom:
Liberty calls, show your zeal in the cause
Defend Freedom’s soil, Constitutions, and laws.
Spurn Foreign influence & never agree
To let innovation spoil Liberty’s Tree.
An unknown composer wrote the tune which British actress and singer Frances B. Hodgkinson (1771-1803), one of the highest paid performers in early America, first sang on the New York stage. The printer issued the song with a portrait of George Washington and included a stanza naming sitting President John Adams. Patriotic tunes like this one were a staple of American performance at the end of the eighteenth century.