Pass it on
Song · A 1776 town · 1768
The Liberty Song
90Sit with it.Not an average of critics. Eight questions, one house.
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. A chorus a crowd could shout.
The review
Dickinson wrote it in 1768, to Heart of Oak, a navy song. The colonies were already taking British tunes and putting their own words in. The chorus is the part that lasted: in freedom we're born, and in freedom we'll live.
A boy could shout it without understanding the tax. The score still counts the sentence he was shouting. Uniting is a real political idea, and the song does not water it down.
Folio
Keep The Liberty Song in the record.
The date, your number, and one sentence.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
The glance
Industry is the thin one.
This phone
Set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
After the credits
Does anyone here do a real job, and does that job matter?
The eight
Industry
9/10
Our purses are ready. The song asks for money and nerve, not a mood.
Household
9/10
Friends, steady. A company, not a hearth.
Piety
9/10
Freedom is the god of the lyric. A church is not.
Courage
9/10
Sung outside a tavern and at a liberty pole, where a name could be noted.
Republic
9/10
The line everybody kept is the civic one: you stand by standing together.
Temperance
9/10
A roar, then it ends. The appetite is for the chorus, not for blood.
Truth
9/10
It says what it wants. It does not hide the tune it stole.
Stewardship
9/10
Easy enough for a thirteen-year-old to belt, and worth remembering the next day.
Live historicallyTeach one chorus that has a duty in it, not only a feeling.
Where to listen
Finding the page.
