Books and Manuscripts

Early Contemporary Manuscript Copy of “Hail, Columbia,” America's First National Song

Manuscript Document
New York, ca. May, 1798. Single sheet, 13 x 7 3/4 in. (330 x 197 mm). Two-page manuscript document in an unknown hand, transcribing the lyrics to Joseph Hopkinson's “Hail, Columbia”, noted at top as performed on May 19, 1798, and sung by a W. Williamson. Creasing from old folds; ink lightly faded; soiling in top corners, recto and verso. 

An early contemporary copy of Joseph Hopkinson's wildly popular “Hail, Columbia", considered America's first national song, and the de facto national anthem of the United States throughout the nineteenth century. Transcribed following one of the earliest performances in New York, performed by W. Williamson, a popular singer of patriotic songs, held on May 19, 1798--less than a month after the song's first performance, by Gilbert Fox, in Philadelphia, on April 25. According to O.G. Sonneck, in his "Critical Notes on the origin of ‘Hail Columbia’", Mr. Williamson was the first person to introduce Hopkinson's song to New York audiences, first singing it around May 3. The above manuscript records four stanzas and choruses, with the last four lines of the first stanza omitted from the initial transcription, but added as a post script, dated November 6, 1798. 

In the spring of 1798, as war between France and the United States seemed inevitable, Hopkinson was asked by an old school friend and then actor, Gilbert Fox, to pen lyrics to the tune of Philip Phile's “The President's March”, to be performed at an upcoming show. Written the same year as the outbreak of the French Revolution, Phile's music was first performed at President George Washington's first inauguration, and had by 1798 become a popular tune and anthem for the presidency. Hopkinson quickly penned lyrics overnight, and when “Hail, Columbia” was performed it quickly became a national sensation. It was sung in the streets by large crowds, performed in theaters across the nation, and found equal favor across the bitter political aisle. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, the song was widely reprinted and copied, and was only eclipsed as the national song in 1931, when the “Star Spangled Banner” was named the official national anthem.