one Nation under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Based on the traditional U.S. tune “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, George M. Cohan penned “The Yankee Doodle Boy” some thirteen years before America’s entry into World War I against the Central Powers, when it formed part of his highly successful Broadway musical “Little Johnny Jones”.
I’m the kid that’s all the candy
I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy
I’m glad I am
So’s Uncle Sam
I’m a real live Yankee Doodle
Made my name and fame and boodle
Just like Mister Doodle did
By riding on a pony
I love to listen to the Dixey strain
“I long to see the girl I left behind me”
And that ain’t a josh
She’s a Yankee, by gosh
Oh, say can you see
Anything about a Yankee that’s a phoney?source: firstworldwar.com
Click here to hear an MP3 of an incredible 1905! recording of “Yankee Doodle Boy” by Billy Murray.
The Gadsden Flag
The rattlesnake was the favorite animal emblem of the Americans even before the Revolution. In 1751 Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette carried a bitter article protesting the British practice of sending convicts to America. The author suggested that the colonists return the favor by shipping “a cargo of rattlesnakes, which could be distributed in St. James Park, Spring Garden, and other places of pleasure, and particularly in the noblemen’s gardens.” Three years later the same paper printed the picture (as seen above) of a snake as a commentary on the Albany Congress. To remind the delegates of the danger of disunity, the serpent was shown cut to pieces. Each segment is marked with the name of a colony, and the motto “Join or Die” below. Other newspapers took up the snake theme.
source: usflag.org
I found this version of “Yankee Doodle Dixie” by Mark Hill this morning. This guy is scary good.
As always…hit pause on the music player to your left before playing the YouTube.
Check out Mark’s CD, Mark Hill “Picks On Chet!”
Frederick Douglass said this on Independence Day, 1841…
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Candidate for Congress from the 11th Congressional District, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, said this on Independence Day, 1946…
Thus we see that this nation has ever been inspired by essential religious ideas. The doctrine of slavery which challenged these ideas within our own country was destroyed.
Recently, the philosophy of racism, which threatened to overwhelm them by attacks from abroad, was also met and destroyed.
Today these basic religious ideas are challenged by atheism and materialism: at home in the cynical philosophy of many of our intellectuals, abroad in the doctrine of collectivism, which sets up the twin pillars of atheism and materialism as the official philosophical establishment of the State.
Inspired by a deeply religious sense, this country, which has ever been devoted to the dignity of man, which has ever fostered the growth of the human spirit, has always met and hurled back the challenge of those deathly philosophies of hate and despair. We have defeated them in the past; we will always defeat them.
In 1957, “Patriotic Popeye” said…“Listen kids, fireworks is too dangerous. I’m going to see that you has a safe and sane fourth of July.”
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Tags: celebration, Independence Day, United States of America
Jayne d'Arcy wrote,
I always watch Jimmy Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy on the 4th and I’m just watching it now as I read this post.
Love that buff Uncle Sam poster. That was always a favorite.
Happy 4th, ya’ll!
Link | July 5th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Pribek wrote,
Yeah Jayne, I was wondering about Cagney when I found the “Yankee Doodle Boy” this morning. I was trying to remember if sang any of the above verse.
Link | July 5th, 2008 at 2:19 am