“Then let Adams be sung by each patriot tongue”

Today is John Adams’s birthday (under the Gregorian Calendar, as he observed most of his life).

In his honor, here are the lyrics that Jonathan Mitchell Sewall (1748-1808) wrote in President Adams’s honor in 1798. Sewall followed the tune of “Hail, Columbia,” composed in 1789 and originally titled “The President’s March.” (It’s now the entrance music for the Vice President.)

SONG FOR JOHN ADAMS’ BIRTHDAY.

AMERICA, shout! thy own Adams still lives!
The terror of traitors and pride of our nation!
’Mid clouds of detraction, still glorious survives,
Sedition’s dread scourage, and his country’s salvation
Let his fame then resound
The wide universe round,
’Till Heaven’s starry arch the loud chorus rebound!
Such honors, pure worth must from gratitude claim,
Till the Sun is extinct and the Globe all on flame!

As bright Sol, whom the planets exulting obey,
Darts thro’ clouds those glad beams that enliven creation,
So Adams, midst tempests and storms, with mild sway,
Of our system the centre and soul, holds his station.
Tho’ dire comets may rise,
Let them meet but his eyes.
And in tangents they whirl, and retreat thro’ the skies.
Our Sun, Regent, Centre! then ever extol,
Till yon Orb cease to shine and those Planets to roll.

As gold try’d by fire leaves the dross all behind,
So, slander’d by Jacobin sons of sedition,
Adams bursts forth refulgent as Saints are refin’d
From the furnace of Satan, that Son of perdition!
Then let Adams be sung
By each patriot tongue,
And Columbia’s loud lyre be to exstacy strung!
These honors such worth must from gratitude claim
Till the Sun is extinct and the heavens on flame!

On Neptune’s vast Kingdom where oceans can flow,
Display’d is our Standard, our Eagle respected,
This change to great Adams and wisdom we owe—
Now our Commerce rides safe, by our Cannon protected.
Then three cheers to our Fleet!
May they never retreat
But with prize after prize their lov’d President greet!
And ne’er may Columbians grow cold in his praise
Till the Sun is extinct and the Universe blaze! 

But while our young Navy such rapture excites,
Our heroes by land claim our warm admiration.
With manhood and youth, ev’n the infant unites,
Sons of Heroes! boast, pride and defence of our Nation!
Such a spirit’s gone forth
Of true valor and worth,
’Twould be arduous to tame it, all pow’rs upon earth!
’Twas Adams inspir’d it—to him be the praise
Long as Cynthia shall shine or the Sun dart his rays!

But turn us to Europe—how fares it with France?
What! confounded, amaz’d, such astonishment ne’er rose!
From the North bursts Suwarrow! I see him advance,
That Victor of victors, that Hero of heroes!
Hardy Russian, Mon Dieu!
If this course you pursue
You will leave Mighty Washington nothing to do.
At that name the Muse kindles, and twining fresh bays
Blends with Adams’s glory, great Washington’s praise!

Not a nation on earth would we fear with such aid
(Heav’n save us alone from internal commotion!)
Not Britain, France, Europe—Columbia would dread
Their forces by land, their proud fleets on the ocean,
Our Heroes prepar’d
Would their progress retard,
Sage Adams to guide and great Washington guard.
Their Glory increasing as nature decays
In Eternity’s Temple refulgent shall blaze!

Sewall was raised by his uncle, Massachusetts Justice Stephen Sewall, and started his legal training under his cousin Jonathan Sewall, once a close friend of Adams but later a Loyalist opponent. The young man then moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for further training with John Pickering. He was an ardent Federalist in the early republic, best known for his verse “War and Washington.”

The Mystery of Poem XXIX

Yesterday I described the 1761 collection of poems titled Pietas et Gratulatio, designed to show off the learning of Harvard College in praise to King George III.

Although the college announced a competition for students and recent graduates, surviving copies of the book with handwritten notes indicate that many of the poems came from men well past their undergraduate days. That list included grammar-school master John Lovell, merchant and scholar James Bowdoin, the Rev. Samuel Cooper, and Dr. Benjamin Church. To be fair, those men all had received Harvard educations.

Several of the poems, particularly those in Latin and Greek, came from Stephen Sewall (1734-1804), who was a recent Harvard graduate. He was also on his way to becoming the college’s professor of Hebrew and other languages.

In 1809 the Monthly Anthology magazine of Boston used Prof. Sewall’s own copy of Pietas et Gratulatio to attribute the poem numbered XXIX to “Thomas Oliver, afterwards judge and lieutenant governour.” Thomas Oliver (1734-1815) would have qualified as a recent Harvard graduate, and he did become the last royal lieutenant governor.

However, Oliver was never a judge. In fact, no one matches that magazine’s description. The other candidates are:

• Andrew Oliver, lieutenant governor but not judge.
• His brother Peter Oliver, judge but not lieutenant governor (shown above).
• Their brother-in-law Thomas Hutchinson, judge and lieutenant governor—and more prominent as governor.

I’ve seen different authors identify all four of those men as the author of poem XXIX.

But there’s more. Soon after publishing that article, the Monthly Anthology received letters from two people in Maine disputing and filling out its attributions. One was the Rev. Dr. Samuel Deane of Portland, the last surviving contributor to Pietas et Gratulatio. The other, left unnamed, said he (or she) had a copy of the book with poem XXIX attributed to Prof. Sewall.

The magazine’s editors accepted what that letter said, even though that reattribution created another question: If Sewall had composed that English poem, why didn’t his own copy of the book say so? Why did it evidently name some other man as author?

In an 1879 issue of the Harvard Library Bulletin, Justin Winsor tallied up the evidence from all the copies of and reports on Pietas et Gratulatio he could find. He wrote that copies owned by the Rev. Jeremy Belknap, Samuel A. Eliot, the Rev. John Lowell of Newbury, college president Edward Holyoke, and Prof. John Winthrop all named the author of poem XXIX as Stephen Sewall. However, five other copies named either Peter or Thomas Oliver.

Sewall definitely wrote poetry, though he was best known for work in Greek and Latin, not English. Peter Oliver wrote newspaper essays and a delightfully sarcastic account of the coming of the Revolution. In contrast, I’ve never come across Thomas Oliver writing anything but justifications for his actions on 2 Sept 1774 (the topic of my talk at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters tonight).

Therefore, though I’m still unsure about who wrote that poem, Thomas Oliver is one of the least likely of the named candidates.

TOMORROW: Poem XXIX at last.

Gov. Bernard’s Book of Poetry

In 1760 George III ascended to the throne of Great Britain, and the following year he married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Also in 1760, Francis Bernard (shown here) became governor of Massachusetts, coming from the same post in New Jersey.

His career dependent on making a good impression in London, Bernard started sucking up to the king and the new royal establishment. He proposed that Harvard College run a contest for the best poems about George III, his new bride, and the death of his grandfather, George II.

According to the 1855 Cyclopaedia of American Literature:

A proposal was set up in the college chapel inviting competition on these themes from undergraduates, or those who had taken a degree within seven years, for six guinea prizes to be given for the best Latin oration, Latin poem in hexameters, Latin elegy in hexameters and pentameters, Latin ode, English poem in long verse, and English ode.

Oxford and Cambridge had similar competitions, which was no doubt where Bernard got the idea.

The resulting best poems were collected with some prose addresses as Pietas et Gratulatio Collegii Cantabrigiensis apud Novanglos. The print shop of Green and Russell produced a handsome volume at quarto size, and in early 1762 the college corporation voted to send a presentation copy to the king himself. The Cyclopaedia says George III “does not appear to have made any special acknowledgment of it.”

There was a generally positive review of Pietas et Gratulatio in the July 1763 Monthly Review in London, though the praise was sometimes faint:

It must be acknowledged, after all, that this New England collection, like other publick offerings of the same kind, contains many indifferent performances; but these, though they can not be so well excused when they come from ancient and established seats of learning, may, at least, be connived at here; and what we could not endure from an illustrious university, we can easily pardon in an infant seminary.

The original volume didn’t identify any authors of the poems, but a number of copies with credits written in by hand circulated around Massachusetts. A detailed retrospective in the Monthly Anthology for June, 1809, used a copy owned by Harvard professor Stephen Sewall to identify the poets, including himself.

That article stated that the English poem numbered “XXIX.” was by “Thomas Oliver, afterwards judge and lieutenant governour.” A number of literary reference books repeated that information over the next century.

Since I was studying Lt. Gov. Oliver for my talk on Thursday, I was struck by this attribution. Because nothing else I’d read about Oliver suggested he was at all interested in poetry.

TOMORROW: Digging deeper.

What Kind of Man Was James Winthrop?

James Winthrop (shown here) was a son of Prof. John Winthrop of Harvard College, one of the most respected New England men of his generation. James benefited from that connection with some appointments, first at Harvard and later within the Massachusetts government. But he doesn’t appear to have ever been content.

In 1786 John Quincy Adams wrote to his mother about Winthrop:

…the librarian, Mr. W.…is a man of genius and learning, but without one particle of softness, or of anything that can make a man amiable, in him. He is, I am told, severe in his remarks upon the ladies; and they are not commonly disposed to be more favorable with respect to him. It is observed that men are always apt to despise, what they are wholly ignorant of. And this is the reason, I take it, why so many men of genius and learning, that have lived retired and recluse lives, have been partial against the ladies. They have opportunity to observe only their follies and foibles, and therefore conclude that they have no virtues. Old bachelors too are very apt to talk of sour grapes; but if Mr. W. ever gets married, he will be more charitable towards the ladies, and I have no doubt but he will be more esteemed and beloved than he is now, he cannot be less.

Winthrop never married.

A Harvard library finding aid for a small set of James Winthrop papers states:

When his father died in 1779, James hoped to succeed him as Harvard’s Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Samuel Williams was chosen instead, though, and it has been speculated that Winthrop’s intemperance and eccentric personality were the primary reasons he was overlooked. Although he participated in a scientific expedition with Williams and Stephen Sewall in October of 1780, he also attempted to damage Williams’ reputation as a scholar on several occasions.

Winthrop was widely known for making malicious comments about others, and as a result he appears to have been unpopular among his colleagues at Harvard. In 1787 he was removed from the librarianship as the result of a newly instituted rule preventing faculty members from holding civil or judicial office. This rule is believed to have been instituted for the sole purpose of removing Winthrop [a register of probate] from the staff.

The position of Hollis Professor became vacant shortly thereafter, but Winthrop was unwelcome. He eventually bequeathed his father’s impressive collection of books to tiny new Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.

After leaving Harvard, Winthrop wrote some prominent essays against ratifying the new Constitution and some analyses of the Book of Revelations. He served many years as a low-level judge. In James Bowdoin and the Patriot Philosophers, Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel wrote: “Regarded as an intriguer, drunkard, and cynic, he was the misfit son of a gifted father, and tolerated out of respect for his ancestors.” But I suspect that the root of Winthrop’s problem wasn’t drinking or intriguing but just not being able to get along easily with people.

For that reason, I’m inclined to think that Winthrop’s writings about the Battle of Bunker Hill are reliable so far as they go, and frustrating because he didn’t grasp what people would be most interested in hearing.