The patriotic folklore apparently began with George Lippard, a popular novelist of Philadelphia. It was Lippard who wrote that most thrilling and irrepressible tale of the bell, the vivid story of the old bellringer waiting to ring the bell on July 4, 1776. This tale first appeared in 1847 in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier under the name, “Fourth of July, 1776,” one of a collection called Legends of the Revolution.
The popularity of Lippard’s legend soon brought imitations. The noted Benson J. Lossing, gathering material for his popular Field Book of the Revolution, visited Philadelphia in 1848 and recorded the story. This gave the legend historical credence in the minds of Lossing’s host of readers. Taking the story presumably from Lossing, Joel Tyler Headley, another well-known historian, included it with certain variations of his own in his Life of George Washington, which was published first serially in 1854 in Graham’s Magazine and then in book form.
The Liberty Bell in a glass case, 1895-1915. From Victor Rosewater, The Liberty Bell Its History and Significance, D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1926. Courtesy Appleton-Century-Croft Inc.
Firmly established as history by Lossing and Headley, Lippard’s story also found poetic expression. The date of the first poem on this theme has not been established, but, once written, it found its way into school readers and into collections of patriotic verse. The most widely read was probably G. S. Hillard’s Franklin Fifth Reader, issued in 1871, although the poem had been in popular use for some time before. Beginning with “There was a tumult in the city, in the quaint old Quaker town,” the poem became a popular recitation piece which every schoolboy knew. The best known lines read:
Hushed the people’s swelling murmur,
Whilst the boy cries joyously;
“Ring!” he’s shouting, “ring, grandfather,
Ring! Oh, ring for Liberty!”
Quickly at the given signal