Down With the Traitors' Serpent Flag (A. Judson Higgins)

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• (Posted 2025-05-16)  CPDL #84933:         

Editor: Antonio Higgins (submitted 2025-05-16).   Score information: Letter, 2 pages, 67 kB   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes: This edition removes some of the cue notes in the chorus.

General Information

Title: Down With the Traitors' Serpent Flag
Composer: A. Judson Higgins
Lyricist: C. C. Flint^{create page}
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: Piano

First published: 1861
Description: According to Kenneth Hartvigsen, this piece represents the many parlor songs associated with the American Civil War, which would have been sung in middle-class, Northern homes.

External websites:

• https://fiav.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/icv24hartvigsenk.pdf
• https://www.loc.gov/item/2008661612/

Original text and translations

English text

1. Sons of the bright and glorious land,
Where freedom first did find a home,
Arouse and with avenging hand,
Consign the traitors to their doom.

R.:
Down with the traitors’ serpent flag,
Death to the wretch o’er whom it waves
And let our heavenborn banner float,
O'er freemens’ homes and traitors’ graves.

2. No foreign foe assails us now,
No tyrant from a distant shore,
In reverence all the nations bow
And friendship from our hands implore.
R.

3. But vipers whom our fire hath warmed
And wretches whom our hands have fed
Have dared tear down our nation’s flag
And raise their ensign in its stead.
R.

4. Our fathers fought for liberty
From an oppressive enemy
We fight as they did to be free
From the foul yoke of slavery.
R.

5. In arrogance and proud disdain
The tyrants lord it o’er the South,
But never, never can they reign
O’er the freemen of Northern birth.