(7)

Much of the source material for these chapters comes from a Boston printer at the time of
the War of 1812, a man by the name of Nathaniel Coverly.

(7)
(8)

What Coverly did was delve into the past, find songs he thought might sell, and print them
in the form of broadside ballads. 13

He found and printed drinking songs, alehouse revels that included roared-out toasts to
rum, ale, and women. He printed bawdy ballads, songs filled with handsome swains, lusty
widows, and sexually available farmers' daughters.

He printed trickster songs. In these ballads, merrymaking country girls thumbed their noses
at clucking church elders, lowly tenant farmers stood up to landed aristocrats, and
apprentices turned the tables on artisan masters. Often descended from ancient carnivals
and seasonal revels, these songs offered singers and listeners a carnivalesque version of the
world, a world upside down, an imagined play space in which, for a moment at least, the
downtrodden and the disempowered might be on top. t 4

The ballads Coverly printed brought older traditions into modern popular culture. Ancient
ballads from village festivals survived being uprooted from English soil; communal songs and
dances made the passage to American settings. Carnival expressions lived on despite church
and civic clampdowns, despite efforts to crush them as pagan, backward, common, or
criminal. Expressions of the body and its yearnings remained central to the culture,
persisting in the face of efforts to make certain acts private or forbidden, efforts to link the
body with filth and sin. Such attempts to control traditional expressions did not, of course,
banish them from the culture. Instead, they changed their meanings. Some communal
traditions would become increasingly subversive, viewed as challenges to authorities. Many
traditions of bodily expression would be increasingly depicted as "dirty" or forbidden in
decent society. Yet both lived on, returning again and again to central places in American
culture.

One of these places would be in the most popular type of song Coverly printed, the patriotic
broadside ballad. Like other printers of the time, Coverly churned out a seemingly endless
stream of patriotic ballads, from songs about the "founding fathers" to anthems on the
American Revolution, the military exploits of the US Navy, and what made Yankees different
from the English. Some of this effort came from timing. Coverly happened to be a printer
atthe time of the War of 1812, the United States' first conflict as a nation. Some ofit
reflected dear efforts to generate patriotic feeling, to create a shared sense of an American
national identity.
Outlines of this identity may be seen in two ballads from Coverly's time, the songs "Yankee
Doodle" and "The Star-Spangled Banner:· Both are antique, both curiosities. Though often
associated with the American Revolution, "Yankee Doodle" probably reached the height of
its popularity during

(8)
(9)

the War of 1812.

"Yankee Doodle" was a trickster song. According to lore, British soldiers came up with the
ballad sometime between 1755 and 1763, during the conflict that came to be called the War
for Empire (in North America), the French and Indian War, or the Seven Years' War. They
invented it to mock the American militia, jeering the Yankees as provincial cowards and
backwoods hicks. During the Revolutionary War, Americans adopted the song. They sang it
without changing the lyrics, dismissive imagery and all, as if being a country bumpkin were a
source of unmitigated pride. Over time, writers added new images: feathers in caps, "
macaroni" which everyone knew was slang for the gold braid English officers wore on their
dress uniforms-and the Yankee dandy's mockery of aristocratic officers in the British Army

The song reveals why early Americans liked dandies. To be a dandy was to be the most
common and vulgar of individuals. Indeed, to be a dandy was to be proud of this position, to
strut one's mediocrity in the face of excellence, to put on airs in front of one's traditional
superiors. The point was to flout tradition by declaring the commoner's social equality with
the aristocrat. By the War of 1812, the message would have been clear: in America, any
backward idiot be a dandy; the common American, no matter how lowly, vulgar, or stupid,
was on proud and equal footing with the English gentleman. ts In its context, the childlike
"Yankee Doodle" was a trickster song, a carnivalesque reversal of order, a statement of
radical, democratic egalitarianism

(9)
(10)

Nathaniel Coverly's patriotic ballads suggest the emergence of competing variants of

patriotism. Two are well known. One was the simple patriotism of following great men, the
extolling of symbols like George Washington as national rallying points. Another was the
patriotism of republican duty, the stress on the ideal that a republic depended on the
virtues of citizens, that these virtues included self-sacrifice for the good of the nation, the
intellectual act of keeping informed about current events, and the idea that the duty of the
elite was to keep a lid on the passions of the American unwashed.

A third variant of patriotism might only be visible by looking at the most inclusive of
popular-culture sources, documents like Coverly's broadsides and sources like popular
music. This was a patriotism that offered a communal celebration of common behaviors.
According to this ideal, the primary characteristic of Americans-what brought them together
in communion-was theircomplete lack of sophistication, good manners, or refinement.
What made them American was their vulgarity. Thus, the musical broadsides of Coverly's
era reveal a type of patriotism that would increasingly split away from republican traditions
and go its own way in American culture. It may have also become the most popular. This
would be a variant of patriotism marked by a

(10)
(11)

liking for violence, loud noise, and bodily expression, a patriotism of fireworks, drunken
celebrations, and assaults on a culture of uplift.

While popular song continued to express communities of interest, shared values, and
cultural styles through much of the nineteenth century, it also expressed conflict. Many of
these conflicts centered on the morality of the market-based capitalism tllat emerged in the
United States after 1815.

The central conflict of the time was over the issue of slavery, along with questions about the
place of African Americans in the United States.

chapter 8, focuses on struggles between two different communities of taste, style, political
belief, and popular music. On one side of this conflict was the genre of music and theatrics
known as "blackface;' or later as "blackface minstrelsy:' On the other side was the reform.

(69)

1812 BALLADS

Following this action, the American fighting fleet would find itself increasingly port-bound,
bottled up by the tightening British blockade. Still, between this second of the Constitution's
exploits and Captain Oliver Hazard Perry's victory on Lake Erie in the fall of 1813, Coverly
continued to print ballads of naval exploits, no matter how small.

In these ballads, the war aims were clear: it was "Free Trade and Sailor's Rights!"
Meanwhile, whether sloop, privateer, or frigate, the guns spoke for the rights and status of
common people: the lowly sailor had become a "jolly seaman bold;' a "noble tar:' a
"dandy;' a "hero" brilliantly lit by "rays of fam'd glory:' 62

These ballads contained little of the language of republicanism, nothing of the rhetoric of
thoughtful analysis or cool debate. Instead, they focused on the imagery of common men
engaged in common behaviors. They favored images of sailors returned from sea battles
and headed for the alehouse, waiting women, and whores on shore. They were the stuff of
drunken celebrations, full rum cups, and groggy sing-alongs. In these ballads, traditions of
community returned in a common version of patriotism. What made it common was its
appeal to sailors, to people who had not learned the value of repressing folk behaviors.
From a gentlemanly standpoint, such expressions would no doubt look vulgar. In the
ballad "Cash in Hand;' for example, the crew of the USS President, under the command of
John Rodgers, celebrated the taking of a British packet with " 260,000 dollars in gold and
silver on board:' The song offered a tone of militant vulgarity:

The British sure, did not well like, This mode of our proceeding, And swore the taking of
their cash, Was no mark of good breeding. 63

Americans, according to these broadsides, were "Yankee Tars:' proudly vulgar sorts rooted
in a common culture of taverns, drink, and sexual gratification.

By the end of the war, these sailors were "Columbia's sons:' representative Americans
who were " proud, rough, undaunted and free:'

They had " touch’d up John Bull" and "humbled haughty Britain's pride:' Old traditions
would return in these ballads. They returned in the trickster imagery

(69)
(70)

of "Yankee Doodle:' in a culture of wild dancing and drink,

In this more common version of patriotism, traditions of community would return along
with an old culture of carnival and bodily expression. The vulgarity was not the result of a
capture of patriotic imagery by lower-order Americans. It was not the result of the
ignorance of common sorts, their failure to understand patriotism's true meanings. To the
contrary,,,Coverly's broadsides demonstrate that one form of American patriotism would
be vulgar and common because it was devoted to people who were widely recognized as
vulgar and common.

In 1812, an English observer would describe the common sailor's "trio of pleasures" as a
bawdy song, a rum-filled bumper, and a "street-pacing harlot:' This type of man, the
observer added, "rarely thinks, seldom reads, and never prays:' 65

According to the most popular variant of patriotism during the War of 1812, this was also
the representative American.

In 1815, American patriotism had a number of meanings:

…
In this variant of patriotism, love of country was twinned with love of self, provided one's
self was common enough, vulgar enough, and even disgusting enough to represent an ideal
of absolute democracy.

JACKSON AND BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS TWIST ON WAR

The War of i812 would end with an ironic twist. Finally, under the command of Andrew
Jackson, a ragtag collection of infantry, militiamen, and pirates would win a clear victory at
the Battle of New Orleans.

Charged with the defense of New Orleans, Jackson entrenched his motley
assemblage to the south of the city, on the Plains of Chalmette. The British,
under the command of the heavily decorated Lord Edward Packenham, had a

(70)
(71)

much larger force. They also had low-lying ground to cover in their assault on Jackson's line,
including a ditch just under the American guns filled with the Louisiana delta's notoriously
thick mud. Two weeks after Christmas, on January 8, 1815, the British force launched its
main attack. Soon the assault slowed in the mud. Then several of Packenham's officers
broke into argument. As the mass of redcoats waited in the glue-like bog, there was heated
talk about retreating, continuing forward, or waiting for reinforcements.

On the British side, it was the worst mistake of the war, for the argument brought the
advance to a halt directly in the American line of fire. Within minutes, it seemed,
Packenham's force suffered more than two thousand men killed, wounded, and missing.
Jackson's force had just eight men killed and thirteen wounded. The exploit would come
nearly a month after the war officially ended. It would also produce, a few years later, what
became the most popular song of the war, "The Hunters of KentuckY:' Penned by Samuel
Woodworth and made famous by Noah Ludlow, a stage actor and manager of a theatrical
troupe that traveled through the nation's far west, the song affirmed the patriotic ideal of
the United States as a nation of common types.

The "Hunters of Kentucky" made Ludlow, who performed it everywhere dressed in a fringed
buckskin costume, into one of the country's best-known theatrical stars. It made the British
out as foreign plunderers, raised the idea of New Orleans as a multicultural city stocked with
the "booty" of wealth and "beauty" of girls of "every hue:' and hailed Jackson as the city's
defender. Two verses conveyed the tone:

You've heard, I 'spose, how New Orleans Is famed for wealth and beauty; There's girls of
every hue, it seems,

From snowy white to sooty. So Packenham he made his brags,

If he in fight was lucky, He’d have their girls and cotton bags,

In spite of old Kentucky.

But Jackson he was wide awake, And was'nt [sic] scar'd at trifles For well he know what aim
we take

With our Kentucky rifles. 66

In later years Jackson would be "Old Kentucky" as well as "Old Hickory:' and the song's
refrain, a repeated "Oh, Kentucky, The Hunters of Kentucky:' would be shouted out by
voters in several elections, three of which would be for the presidency. Finally, while the
song reaffirmed an ideal of patriotism as

(71)
(72)

rooted in the imagery of common Americans, it would also herald another shift in focus. In
New England during the War of 1812, this character was represented by the sailor. The "
Hunters of Kentucky" brought up what would become an even more popular image: the
sharpshooting westerner, .the-rugged backwoodsman, the sometimes plainspoken,
sometimes crowing character represented by Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Andrew
Jackson himself. The song marked a shift toward the frontier as the wellspring of the
American character: for later generations, the sailor would become the frontiersman.

The end of the war would eventually be seen as the beginning of a great transformation, a
market revolution, a shift to the competitive culture of modern capitalism.

From his tiny shop, Coverly continued to print trickster tales, old traditions in a culture
increasingly bent on progress. As might be expected, he would be supplanted as a leading
printer for common folks, by changing styles, by other, more modern printers. He would die,
" in obscurity;' in 1824.