[Washington, George]:

$5,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[CONTEMPORARY MANUSCRIPT POEM IN TEN STANZAS, MOURNING THE RECENT DEATH OF GEORGE WASHINGTON]. A contemporary manuscript containing the text of a popular Masonic poem eulogizing George Washington, who died in December, 1799. Printed as a broadside or song sheet in numerous editions in the early 1800s, with such titles as Lamentation for the Death of Washington, The Death of Washington, Masonic Lamentation for Washington, Columbia's Lamentation for Gen. Washington, and America's Lamentation on the Death of Gen. Washington, the present text was one of many hundreds of poems, songs, sermons, and orations delivered on the occasion of the first President's passing.On January 6, 1800, less than a month after Washington's death, Congress proclaimed the former Commander-in-Chief's February birthday a day of national mourning. Nearly every settlement in the nation held its own services to honor Washington in the first months of 1800, accompanied by an outpouring of eulogies, as well as musical and artistic expression. Songs and poems such as this one represent an important early step in the apotheosis of Washington, a mythologizing which was accomplished by the American people with unprecedented fervor and alacrity. The tone of the present work, eulogizing the President and hero of the Revolution in suitably melodramatic fashion, fits comfortably within that myth-making tradition. It begins from the perspective of Columbia herself:"How sad are the tidings that sound in my ears/ my hea

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