Among the club of wits that belonged to the British army, there was a Doctor Shackburg attached to the staff, who combined with his knowledge of surgery the skill and talent of a musician. To please the new-comers, he composed a tune, and, with much gravity, recommended it to the officers as one of the most celebrated airs of martial music. The joke took, to the no small amusement of the British. Brother Jonathan exclaimed, it was "nation fine;" and in a few days, nothing was heard in the provincial camp but the air of "Yankee Doodle."
Little did the author, in his composition, then suppose, that an air, made for the purpose of levity and ridicule, should be marked for such high destinies. In twenty years from that time, the national march--now universally recognized by the patriots--inspired the heroes of Bunker's Hill; and, in less than thirty, Lord Cornwallis and his army marched into the American lines to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."
"Woe worth the hour when it is crime To plead the poor dumb bondman's cause, When all that makes the heart sublime, The glorious throbs that conquer time, Are traitors to our cruel laws."--LOWELL
The general appearance of the majority of the coloured people in the streets of Charleston denoted abject fear and timidity, some of them as I passed looking with servile dread at me (as they did at almost every one who happened to pass), so that I could read in many of their looks a suspicion of interference, which, commiserating their condition as I did, was quite distressing.
It is impossible to form a correct estimate of what the perpetuators of slavery have to expect, if once the coloured population obtain a dominant position. The acknowledged gradual depopulation of the whites in the slave states, through sickness, exhaustion of the land, and consequent emigration, united with other causes, there is no doubt will eventually result in a great preponderance of coloured people, who, aroused by the iniquitous treatment they undergo, will rise under some resolute leader, and redress their wrongs. I was quite struck to see in Charleston such a disproportion of the colours, and, without exaggerating, I can say, that almost if not quite three-fourths of those I met in the streets were, if not actually of the negro race, tinged in a greater or less degree with the hue.