"Look here, Joe," said Fox, dropping into a chair, "I need some help and you're the only man I know who can give it to me. No, no, old man, it's not money I'm after. To-morrow night I'm to have a benefit at the theatre, but not a single box has been sold; so, unless something can be done to attract public attention, I'm afraid I shall have a mighty thin house. Now it strikes me that, with all this war-fever in the air, if I could get some patriotic verses, something really fiery and inspiriting, written to the tune of 'The President's March,' I might draw a crowd. Several of the people around the theatre have tried it, but they have all given it up as a bad job, and say that it can't be done. So you're my last hope, Joe, and I think you could do it."
Shutting himself up in his study, within an hour Hopkinson had completed the first verse and chorus of what was to prove one of the greatest of our national songs, and had submitted them to his wife, who sang them to a harpsichord accompaniment. The tune and the words harmonized. A few hours later the song was completed and was being memorized by Fox. The next morning Philadelphia was placarded with announcements that that evening Mr. Fox would sing, for the first time on any stage, a new patriotic song. The house was packed to the doors. As the orchestra broke into the familiar opening bars of "The President's March," and Fox, slender and debonair, bowed from behind the footlights, the audience grew hushed with expectancy. When the now familiar words,
"Immortal patriots, rise once more!
Defend your rights, defend your shore!"
went rolling through the theatre from pit to gallery, the audience went wild. Eight times they made him sing it through, and the ninth time they rose and joined in the rousing chorus:
"Firm, united let us be,
Rallying round our Liberty.
Like a band of brothers joined,
Peace and safety we shall find."
Night after night the singing of "Hail, Columbia," in the theatres was applauded by audiences delirious with enthusiasm, and within a few days it was being sung by boys in the streets of every city from Portland to Savannah. Never since the days of Bunker Hill had the nation been so stirred as it was in that summer of 1798.
On July 6, with the red-white-and-blue ensign streaming proudly from her main truck, the sloop of war Delaware, twenty guns, of Baltimore, under Stephen Decatur, Sr., put to sea to an accompaniment of booming cannon. Cape Henry had scarcely sunk below the horizon before she was hailed by a merchantman which had been boarded and plundered by a French privateer only the day before. Upon hearing this news Decatur set off in a pursuit as eager as that with which a bloodhound follows the trail of a fugitive criminal. A few hours later his lookouts reported four vessels dead ahead. Being unable to determine which was the privateer, he ran in his guns, closed his ports, and keeping on his course until he was sure that he had been seen, stood hurriedly off, as though afraid of being captured. Just as he had anticipated, the Frenchman fell into the trap, and piling on his canvas, bore down upon him. It was not until the privateersman drew close enough to make out the gun-ports and the unusual number of men on the American's decks, that he discovered Decatur's ruse and attempted to escape. But it was too late. The Delaware's superior speed enabled her easily to overhaul the Frenchman, which proved to be La Incroyable, fourteen guns and seventy men. So accurate and deadly was the fire poured into her by the Delaware's gunners (forerunners, remember, of those bluejackets who handle the twelve-inch guns on the dreadnaught Delaware to-day) that within ten minutes after the action had commenced the French tricolor came fluttering down. We had struck our first blow against the power of France.
The captured vessel was sent into port under a prize crew, was refitted, added to the American Navy as the Retaliation—fitting name!—went to sea under command of William Bainbridge (the same who a few years later was to lose the war-ship Philadelphia to the Barbary pirates in the harbor of Tripoli), and shortly afterward was recaptured by the French frigate l'Insurgente, being the only vessel of our little navy taken by the French.
By the beginning of 1799 the West Indian waters were as effectually patrolled by American war-ships as a great city is patrolled by policemen. The newly built American frigates were objects of great amusement and derision to the French and British officers stationed in the West Indian colonies, for they were far too heavily armed, according to European ideas, carrying almost double the number of guns usual to vessels of their class. It is interesting to recall the fact, however, that sixty-odd years later European officers were equally derisive and sceptical of another American innovation in war-ships which was destined to revolutionize naval warfare—the monitor. But before long the sceptics were compelled to revise their opinions of the fighting qualities of our infant navy. Our fleet was at this time divided into two squadrons, both of which made their headquarters at St. Christopher, or, as it was more commonly called, St. Kitts, on the island of Antigua; one, under Commodore Barry, running as far south as the Guianas, while the other, under Commodore Truxtun, cruised northward to Santo Domingo, thus effectually cutting off from commercial intercourse with the mother country the rich French colonies in the Caribbean.
Truxtun was a most picturesque and romantic figure. Short and stout, red-faced, gray-eyed, loud-voiced, gallant with women and short-tempered with men, he was as typical a sea fighter as ever trod a quarter-deck with a brass telescope tucked under his arm. From the time when, as a boy of twelve, he ran away to sea, until, a national hero, he was laid to rest in Christ Church graveyard in Philadelphia, his life was as full of hair-breadth escapes and hair-raising adventures as that of one of Mr. George A. Henty's heroes. A sailor before the mast when scarcely in his teens, he was impressed into the British Navy, where his ability attracted such attention that he was offered a midshipman's warrant, which he refused. When only twenty years of age he commanded his own ship, in which he succeeded, though at great personal hazard, in smuggling large quantities of much-needed powder into the rebellious colonies. Eventually his ship was captured and he was made a prisoner. Escaping from the British prison in the West Indies where he was confined, he made his way to the United States, obtained letters of marque from the first Continental Congress, and was the first to get to sea of that long line of privateersmen who, first in the Revolution, and afterward in the War of 1812, practically drove British commerce from the Atlantic. At the close of the Revolution Truxtun returned to the merchant service, in which he rose to wealth and position. When the American Navy was organized under the stimulus of French aggression, he was offered and accepted the command of the thirty-eight-gun frigate Constellation, a new and very beautiful vessel, splendidly officered and manned, and with heels as fast as her gun-fire was heavy.