Page:Hold the Fort! (Scheips 1971) low resolution.pdf/37

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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]


Grog, Sex, and the People's Party

At the same time that the Republicans were giving their Democratic opponents the "what-for" to the tune of "Hold the Fort," the Prohibitionists, whose roots went back to the colonial period, were trying to dry up the country to the same tune. In so doing they perhaps sought to confuse the opposition—if they were not themselves confused—by singing two anonymously published versions of the same song. One was entitled "Hold the Fort for Prohibition" and the other "Storm the Fort for Pro-