Hold the Fort!/Hold the Fort Until November

by Paul J. Scheips

Hold the Fort Until November

In the years 1876 to 1884 (and very possibly at other times) "Hold the Fort" was adapted to the secular if not downright profane uses of presidential politics. In the campaigns of those years in which Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and James G. Blaine ran on the Republican ticket against, respectively, Samuel J. Tilden, Winfield Scott Hancock, and Grover Cleveland, there were at least eight Republican campaign songs inspired by and sung to the tune of "Hold the Fort." These songs, of course, celebrated not only the presidential candidates but also their running mates—William A. Wheeler, Chester A. Arthur, and John A. Logan. Their rhyming and originality often left much to be desired and there was not much subtlety in them, but they had a tune that could be used by evangelists of the hustings as well as of the cloth. One of them, vintage 1876, was James Nicholson's "Our Watchword," the third verse and refrain of which ran:

Rebels call for reformation,
  Thieves for honest men,
Till the Treasury of the nation,
  They can rob again.

Loyal men throughout the nation,
  Strike for Liberty!
Now the names of HAYES and WHEELER
  Shall our watchword be.^[104]

Another song of the same campaign, but with something more of a lilt, clearly showed its musical inspiration:

Rally round the flag again!
The flag that Lincoln bore!
Rally round the stars and stripes,
Brothers as of yore!
Hold the fort until November;
Victory is sure!
Hold the fort for Hayes and Wheeler;
Never men were truer!^[105]

Not showing much originality in either songs or issues, the Republican Congressional Committee used the same song, under the title "Victory Is Sure," during the Garfield campaign of 1880 by merely substituting "Garfield-Arthur" for "Hayes and Wheeler."^[106] Similarly, it also used "Round Our Banner," another song to the tune of "Hold the Fort" from the 1876 campaign.^[107] Moreover, some of the same verses to the same tune appeared in Peter Maithre's "Boys in Blue," which the Republican National Committee used (with necessary changes) in the Blaine campaign of 1884.^[108] "Hurrah for General Garfield" was another Republican song of the 1880 campaign, published anonymously, to the tune of "Hold the Fort."^[109] In 1884 the Republican Campaign Committee published "Hold the Helm," which was sung to the same tune, as anybody could have guessed from its chorus if not from its title:

Hold the helm! The pilot's coming!
  See his white sail dip;
Logan lights the danger signal!
  Blaine will guide the ship!^[110]