It has been a century since Oscar Sonneck established the prevailing wisdom on America's first national song. His account of the composition, first performances, and initial publication of "Hail Columbia" remains unassailable, even though he worked without the benefit of sources, including the first edition of the song, that have since come to light. But despite Sonneck's reliability in matters of historical fact, his interpretation of "Hail Columbia" as "a non-partisan song" needs revision. 1 Later writers have tended to agree, if only tacitly, with William Treat Upton, who when updating Sonneck's work thirty years on saw no reason to amend this point. Arguing that it "contains no party allusions whatsoever," Upton maintained that "Hail Columbia" originated "as a patriotic and not as a political song." 2 This is a dubious distinction, although on the first point Upton cannot be questioned. "Hail Columbia" is rightly regarded as the preeminent musical example of the rise of patriotic feeling in pre-Jeffersonian America and as a precursor to "The Star-Spangled Banner." But in the deeply divided political climate of the late-1790s United States, no song could have hoped to inspire the kind of solidarity that has since become associated with the American national anthem. Although historians generally recognize that "Hail Columbia" trumpeted the values of John Adams's Federalist administration, something of the partisan atmosphere in which the song first circulated is obscured if "Hail Columbia" is invoked merely as a symbol of emergent nationalism. The central contention of this essay is that the patriotism associated with "Hail Columbia" was in fact political-that it was partisan by virtue of its failure to represent a true consensus on national issues. When this anthem first resounded in theaters on the northeastern seaboard of the United States in April 1798, the nation's leaders had for years been locked in a bitter dispute concerning American relations with Europe's two leading powers, England and France. Federalists favored ties with the British at the expense of the French, Republicans the opposite, and a sour turn in Franco-American relations had lately given Federalists an edge. France's reaction to the Anglo-friendly shipping policies established by the Jay Treaty had triggered an undeclared state of naval hostilities known as the Quasi-War. Efforts to resolve this conflict ground to a halt when, in a Parisian diplomatic scandal known as the XYZ Affair, French
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