The American patriot's war song: or An appeal to freemen

The American Patriot’s War Song describes two serious problems that the United States was having with Great Britain: the impressment of seamen and the depredations against settlers in the Northwest territories by British-encouraged native tribes, problems that led to the War of 1812. The Embargo of 1807 was supposed, in part, to stop the impressment of American seamen into the British naval service, but it did not work. Brazen British cruisers continued to intercept American vessels and remove crew.

In addition, Britain still occupied strongholds in Canada and encouraged native tribes to prey on American settlers on the Northwest frontier. Verse 8 and the footnote on the broadside refer to Fort Malden, now Amherstburg, Ontario, “where the British pay the Savages for the American scalps.” This is a reference to British Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hamilton’s alleged practice of offering bounties for American scalps during the Revolutionary War, a practice encouraged by both the British and American forces (Young 207-18). Fort Malden wasa central headquarters where Indians were given gifts and encouragement for their depredations against white Americans.

From the subject matter and several turns of phrase, it appears that the author selected as a model and tune for his text an old sea song tune with very deep roots as a vehicle for descriptive narratives of storms and battles (seeThe Tempest) as well as protests against unjust actions. The rocking, 3/4-meter tune was probably written in the 1720s for a text with a nautical subject beginning “How happy are young lovers.” But in the ballad opera Robin Hood (1730), in an aria set to this tune, a thief gives the Puritan fool the following advice in exchange for his cash.

We are wiser than the Miser, after taking store of pelf.
With a shilling, the poor villain dares not gratify himself. (air 11)

This same theme is also present in a text in The Prisoner’s Opera (1730) and the Robin Hood tune soon replaced the original for the aria beginning “Welcome, Welcome, Brother Debtor” (Bickham 2:26).

In 1731 the same tune was used in George Lillo’s ballad opera Silvia with an aria describing a storm at sea. This song became known as “The Sailor’s Complaint” and continued the nautical idea in the original song. These two themes, the debtor and the storm at sea, stayed with the tune and many parodies and sequels to each of these texts appeared from the 1730s on. New titles that became attached to the tune were “Hosier’s Ghost” from Richard Glover’s song (ca. 1739) and “The Storm,” “The Tempest,” or “Cease Rude Boreas” from an extremely popular and stable text beginning “Cease, rude Boreas, blust’ring railer” (Roud #949; R. Keller, Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources; Lambert 1:134-38, 176, 284-85; see two versions of The Tempest (see also The Tempest: Together with "The last time I came o'er the moor"). In an apparent sequel to this Coverly broadside text, the issue of impressment was addressed directly to the same tune in the song “Kidnapped Seamen” in the Columbian Naval Songster (19-21).