Note YE SONS OF COLUMBIA — Chapter I

Page 278. Ye Sons of Columbia: an Ode. From "Original Poems by Thomas Green Fessenden, Esq., author of Terrible Tractoration, or Caustic's Petition to the Royal College of Physicians, and Democracy Unveiled. Philadelphia: Printed at the Lorenzo Press of E. Bronson. 1806." The following note to this poem appears in the first edition: "The above Ode was written, set to musick, and sung on a publick occasion in Rutland, Vermont, July, 1798. At that time the armament, which afterwards sailed to Egypt, under Buonaparte, lay at Toulon: its destination was not known in America, but many supposed that it was intended to waft the blessings of French Liberty to the United States." Fessenden seems to have been possessed of an acute hatred of the French, due, perhaps, to his residence in England. Three other poems in this little book are devoted to denouncing Napoleon, the Jacobins, and the "sans culotte"—of which latter phrase he was singularly fond.