A historic ode to the Fourth of July—in the Penn Libraries

Picture it: Philadelphia, 1788.

Throngs of people surround floats to celebrate not only the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but the recent ratification of the U.S. Constitution in Pennsylvania—a project achieved after a long, sweaty summer of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Among these floats is a small printing press whose workers produce copies of an ode written for the occasion by Declaration signer, judge, and amateur musician Francis Hopkinson. During or after the event, Penn founder Benjamin Franklin acquires a copy of the ode for his collections—this copy resides in Penn Libraries.

‘An Ode for the Fourth of July’: What is it?

“An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1788,” a copy of which is held by Penn as a rare broadside, was drafted by Hopkinson for a Fourth of July parade referred to as the “Grand Federal Procession,” attended by thousands in Philadelphia and featuring floats that represented various trades and professions in the city. Hopkinson, who had previously written a vast array of music that’s partially accessible through Penn Libraries’ Francis Hopkinson Collections, created the ode for the occasion, which was significant after a nail-biter ratification vote in Pennsylvania.  

“This was a moment when the United States, as we conceive of It, was really coming into existence,” explains Kislak Center curator John Pollack.

Pollack describes the ode as consistent with Hopkinson’s “flowery” language as a poet, and typical of Revolutionary-era music that was reckoning with a new kind of patriotism that borrowed sentiment from the old. Hopkinson, who was born in 1737 in Philadelphia and baptized in the Anglican Church, was previously known to have performed songs like “Rule, Brittania!” 

Notable in the language—aside from familiar references to “the people” and being “free”—is a more expansionist vision of the newly established United States —“Behold! an empire rise!”—and the use of a nickname for the republic, “Columbia,” which implies that the nation is heir to Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Empire. 

“There are lots of interesting questions that can be generated [from the semiquincentennial] and one of them is how people like Hopkinson navigate these tricky shifts of allegiances in their lifetimes,” says Pollack. “Hopkinson was a proud British subject, an Anglican. And things change within a short period of years, and he makes an ode to something different, which sounds a lot like the old thing in a way, but can’t be the old thing.”

Who was Francis Hopkinson?

Hopkinson, a lesser-known Founding Father, belonged to the inaugural class of students at the school we know as the University of Pennsylvania: he entered what was then known as “The Academy” in 1751. He then joined the first class of The College when it was formed, graduating in the Class of 1757 and studying alongside eight other students who immersed themselves in ethics, moral philosophy, “natural philosophy” (the sciences), and classical rhetoric.

Though he was a civic leader, as both a judge and a delegate from New Jersey who signed the Declaration of Independence, he was perhaps better known for his commitment to the arts: he hand-copied music, as was common for amateur musicians of the time; wrote essays; played the harpsichord; produced political satire; and is sometimes credited as the first American-born musician to create a secular song , entitled “My Days Are So Wondrous Free.”

Despite the ode not having the shelf life of, say, compositions like “Yankee Doodle,” Pollack says the ode is emblematic of Revolutionary rhetoric and uniquely situates Hopkinson as a key figure in Philadelphia society, spanning its political and cultural spaces as well as its central institution of education.

The ode “shows us that Hopkinson is really central to the political and cultural literary musical life of Philadelphia through this whole period,” says Pollack. “That, I think, makes him particularly interesting.”