Augusta Browne and the 1876 Presidential Election: “The Nation Calls!”

The Republican National Committee distributed the Hayes & Wheeler Song Bookfrom coast to coast during the contest between the Republican candidate, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, and the Democrat, Governor Samuel Tilden of New York.[2] Victory for Hayes ultimately came down to a single electoral vote, making this contest the most disputed presidential election of the nineteenth century.     

The months of controversy that followed the election were still in the future when the Browne siblings collaborated on five numbers in the Hayes & Wheeler Song Book, with her music joined to his words in “The Nation’s Best Hope” and “The Nation Calls!” Political songsters were traditionally small, paperback pamphlets of partisan lyrics to be sung to well-known tunes that were named but not notated because so many people knew the familiar melodies by heart. By contrast, the Hayes & Wheeler anthology presented more than half of the songs in formal notation, likely through Browne Garrett’s influence as a composer and professional music teacher.[3]

This campaign songbook was not yet available digitally when I was preparing my biography of Augusta Browne. I stumbled into it in 2021, the year following publication of my book, when library cataloguing and scanning of political ephemera caught up with my research (and vice versa). But library digital scans lacked adequate resolution to see the words and music clearly. At the Library of Congress Performing Arts Reading Room, I finally had the opportunity to study and make better photos of the Hayes & Wheeler Song Book.

The Nation Calls!

Gen. Browne, a Patent Office attorney in Washington, DC, had supported the Republican party since its formation in the mid-1850s. He campaigned vigorously for John C. Frémont, the first Republican presidential candidate, in 1856. The siblings—widowed sister and unmarried younger brother—shared a house in Washington, DC, at the time of the 1876 election.[4] Browne Garrett may have been swept along by her brother’s partisan enthusiasm, but she nevertheless recognized the chance to distribute her music through the 1876 national campaign publication. She had always been media-savvy about using magazines and newspapers to circulate her music and prose to a wider audience than sales of sheet music or books could achieve. Thus, she was quick to seize the opportunity to distribute her music to the public nationwide in the Hayes & Wheeler Song Book.

The prominence of songs by one or both Brownes in the Hayes & Wheeler Song Book indicates vigorous participation, if not leadership, in the campaign effort, but by which sibling? They collaborated on five songs in the anthology, and Browne Garrett contributed four more of her own. Her efforts included new songs as well as earlier songs reworked with relevant lyrics; for example, “The Nation Calls” added topical words by her brother to a song from 1854, “The Youth’s Parting Song.”

From patriotic and political events to temperance and moral crusades, songsters were published in large numbers in nineteenth-century America. Since the lyrics were intended to be sung to familiar popular or traditional tunes, no musical notation was needed. The contributions to the Hayes & Wheeler Song Book by the Browne songwriting duo stand out both in quantity and complexity.[5]

On Hand Again

Browne Garrett took the opportunity to revise some of her earlier songs into vigorous settings suitable for group singing at campaign events, parades, and rallies. Each sibling also contributed fresh campaign lyrics or choral arrangements for traditional tunes, such as “Auld Lang Syne,” the opening song in the collection, retitled “On Hand Again.” Gen. Browne’s new words to “Auld Lang Syne” praised Hayes and called for his Presidency, asserting, “In war, in peace, he fill’d each trust, with faith and judgment sound.” The song’s title referred to Hayes’s statement— while recovering from a battlefield wound—that he would soon be “on hand again” to continue the fight.

In all, Gen. Browne provided lyrics for fourteen of sixty-five songs in the pocket-size book. Several of his lyrics indicated the tune to be sung in the traditional songster manner, as in the case of “Freemen! Now Strike for Right,” to the tune of “My Country ’tis of Thee”:

The song celebrated the role that formerly enslaved could play in the nation’s future under Hayes’s leadership. In “Attention, Ye Freemen!” Browne again addressed the newly enfranchised and exhorted freemen to “save rights that ye cherish, Be watchful, lest liberty perish.” The song’s refrain proclaimed, “Hurrah, for our platform, our leaders, our cause; Hurrah, Constitution, our Union, and laws.” His sister arranged the lyrics for “Attention, ye Freemen” to the “Garibaldi Hymn.”

Despite these brave words, the tide of support for Reconstruction was waning by 1876. President Grant had gradually reduced the Federal troops that protected newly emancipated Americans and their right to vote. Hayes continued to sideline Federal soldiers in Louisiana and South Carolina. Democrats quickly ascended to dominate southern politics, and Black Americans lost access to the vote through physical and economic intimidation just as they began to exercise suffrage and hold political office.

National Veteran Glee Club 

General Browne was an amateur singer who enjoyed singing in church choirs and Männerchor ensembles.[6] He helped organize the National Veteran Glee Club in Washington, DC, comprised of Union veterans of the Civil War. On March 13, 1865, Browne was awarded the rank of brigadier general of volunteers by brevet for “gallant and meritorious service during the war” in the New York volunteer militia and the Veteran Reserve Corps.[7]

Browne worked apart from his sister on a few songs in the Hayes & Wheeler Song Book. He collaborated with another composer, L. Engelke, in the song “Our Banners.” He added words to traditional German melodies in “O Patriot Hearts!” and “What Do You Propose to Do About It?” He produced both music and words for “The National Veteran’s Song,” which was performed by the National Veteran Glee Club. Gen. Browne wrote poems in rather formal, Victorian style, but he established a broad camaraderie of purpose in his “National Veteran’s Song.” “Stand by the Union flag, my boys,” he wrote, “That symbol is our nation’s pride, For that dear flag our brothers died.” He exhorted his country to “Advance! We’re to our standard true—The Union flag—red, white, and blue!”

Browne Garrett arranged popular airs for her brother’s verses in “The Empty Sleeve,” set to a traditional Irish air, “The Minstrel Boy,” and “The Flag of the Union Floats” to “A Life on the Ocean Wave.” She wrote her own lyrics to refashion her 1848 song, “Wake, Poland, Awake!” as “Wake, Sons of Columbia.”

Songs in the anthology ranged from comic ditties to hymnlike anthems and even a number in German. The recent war was a frequent topic, as well as attacks on Democrats, the Ku Klux Klan, “Slippery Sam” (or Sham) Tilden, and the corruption of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall in New York City. Nobody took for granted this “Centennial Race” of 1876.

The Nation’s Best Hope

 “The Nation’s Best Hope”—Gen. Browne’s lyrics with his sister’s music—was by far the longest song in the collection. The three pages of music for men’s chorus with keyboard accompaniment gallop along with joyful excitement.[8]

Browne Garrett mentioned the anthem by name in a letter to Lucy Hayes in March, 1877, in which she offered congratulations to the wife of the newly-sworn-in President Hayes:

My dear Madam[e],

As one of your most earnest well-wishers permit me thus to address you. The triumph of President Hayes was indeed a most felicitous epoch for the nation.

I am glad to have had the pleasure of aiding in the righteous cause, as my brother Gen. W. H. Browne (who was among the very earliest pioneers in the Republican Campaign both with Speech and Song) and myself wrote and composed the words and music of at least seventeen songs. One of them which perhaps you have heard—“The Nation’s Best Hope”—expresses the sincere sentiments of millions of enlightened people.[9]

Gen. Browne’s verses for The Nation’s Best Hope” celebrated candidate Hayes for his courage in wartime and solid record of integrity in governance:  

The Nation now summons as chief / The man who can concord restore,
And bring too true hearts relief, And blend sections in one, as of yore,
Say, who is the Nation’s best hope? / Name him who with treason can cope,
Whose actions can bear the clear light, With a record all spotless and bright!
Refrain: We know HAYES is the man, hurrah! And elect him we can, hurrah!

But say, have his dealings been just, In all the relations of life?
And sacredly kept ev’ry trust? With evil been ever at strife?
Beware! In our Nation’s great need, Lean not on a broken, weak reed;
Take one whose companions were pure, Whose footsteps are steadfast and sure.
Refrain: We know HAYES is the man, hurrah! And elect him we can, hurrah!

When our Union seemed in its last throe, And noble blood hallowed the ground,
And our household were speechless with woe, Your candidate where was he found?
Take one who has faced battle’s brunt, Who met gallant, fierce foemen in front,
When traitors conspired in the rear—If such you have, let him appear!
Refrain: We know HAYES is the man, hurrah! And elect him we can, hurrah!

As comrade for him you have named, Now seek for another as true,
Like HAYES, who ne’er justly was blamed, And eminent all the land through;
Let both be men learned and wise, And statesmen whom none can despise;
In such can our country be free—Say, who shall your second choice be?
Refrain: We say WHEELER’s that man, hurrah! And elect him we can, hurrah!

The Righteous Cause

The post-Civil War administrations of Johnson and Grant had been rife with profiteering and scandals among government officials. Gen. Browne’s lyrics referenced those concerns by attributing to Hayes a “record all spotless and bright.” Browne Garrett’s words to Mrs. Hayes also reflected personal outrage at the corruption and immorality of recent years. Her 1877 letter to Mrs. Hayes commended the First Lady’s “prudence and godliness” in the “purification of society” as aspects of their “righteous cause.”

Browne Garrett was an activist for conservative values. From her first forays in print to her dying day, she wrote about Christian faith in almost every article or book that she published. This was a woman who authored Sunday School pamphlets that preached against playing cards and going to the theater, which she called the “devil’s ground,” “a curse to the world,” a “school of vice and corruption” and an “irremediable evil…[whose] only cure is eradication.”[10]

She was a dedicated Christian who strove to live her faith and enjoined others to do so as well. Browne Garrett’s specific words to Mrs. Hayes—godliness, purification, and righteous cause—indicate that the personal was political to her. She expected public ethics to demonstrate Christian values.

For her brother, who served five long years to maintain the Union, the political was personal. The integrity of the constitution and the government were his greatest concerns. Rutherford Hayes had satisfied each sibling through his actions in office and in war. Together, the composer and the general blended their skills and talents in support of their respective values in the Hayes & Wheeler Song Book. The Browne siblings collaborated on several music projects during the 1870s, including the memorial service for Samuel Morse at the US Capitol in 1872. They published a song together, “Who Has Not a Ship at Sea,” around 1879. But, without question, the 1876 Hayes & Wheeler Song Book represents the peak of their songwriting partnership, as well as the high point of their political involvement.

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[1] Ratified in 1920, the nineteenth amendment guaranteed women’s right to vote. In this essay, I refer to Augusta Browne as Browne Garrett (her married name), to distinguish her from her brother William Henry Browne (shortened here to Gen. Browne, W. H. Browne, or simply Browne). In the Hayes and Wheeler Song Book, the composer’s name occurs variously as Augusta Browne-Garrett, “Mrs. A. B. G.,” and “A. B. G.,” while her brother is consistently named as “General [or Genl.] W. H. Browne.”

[2] Based on evidence of intimidation of newly-enfranchised Black voters in the South, the Republican Hayes and his running mate, Congressman William Wheeler, defeated Tilden by a single electoral vote. Tilden won the popular vote in 1876, but a major controversy erupted over the electoral ballots from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, each of which submitted double sets of ballots, one supporting Tilden and the other Hayes. A Congressional electoral commission ultimately awarded Hayes all the disputed electoral votes. The Hayes administration effectively ended Reconstruction enforcement efforts in the South, and Democratic candidates quickly recaptured power in the southern states.

[3] You can look through the digitized song book from the New York Public Library with this link. The Music Division of the Library of Congress contains a forty-eight-page edition and an abbreviated, sixteen-page edition of the Hayes & Wheeler Song Book. The campaign also published a seventy-two-page edition with no music notation.

[4] The Browne home, 422 Third St. [NE], stood only a few blocks from the US Capitol. By 1876, their five other brothers and two sisters were deceased, as well as their parents. Augusta Browne Garrett had no children, nor did Gen. W. H. Browne, although he married soon after Browne Garrett’s death in 1882.

[5] Some of the other named contributors to Hayes & Wheeler Song Book were James Nicholson (lyrics to seven well-known tunes); Thaddeus K. Preuss (arrangement of or lyrics for eight familiar tunes); and Eben E. Rexford (lyrics for four familiar songs).

[6] Männerchor were German all-male choruses popular in many American cities in the second half of the nineteenth century. The ensembles performed in concerts, events, and competitions. German immigrants brought the male choral tradition to the US, especially following the 1848 revolution that destabilized much of Europe.

[7] “A Memorial Cross,” Washington, DC Evening Star (June 7, 1902), p. 16.

[8] The indication “Sym.” [Symphony] refers to an instrumental introduction or postlude in a song from this era.

[9] Augusta Browne Garrett to Lucy Hayes, March 9, 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library, Fremont, Ohio. Mrs. Hayes (“Lemonade Lucy”) was well known for her advocacy of temperance and various charitable causes.

[10] Augusta Browne Garrett, Can I Play Cards? (New York: Hunt & Eaton, n.d.); Can I Attend the Theatre? (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.); “Can the Theatre Be Purified?” New York Observer (Feb. 15, 1866); and “The Devil’s Ground,” New York Observer (Oct. 1, 1868).