Poetry Wars. Colin Wells
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language in verse waned after 1776, it did not disappear entirely. In fact, the most famous example of the genre appeared in the summer of 1777, in response to an equally famous, or infamous, proclamation issued by General Burgoyne in the months prior to the Battle of Saratoga. The story of the battle and its importance for the outcome of the war is well known: Burgoyne had spent the previous winter lobbying Parliament to support his strategy to bring the war to a speedy end by gaining control of the Hudson from Canada to New York, which would effectively cut off New England, widely considered the epicenter of the rebellion, from the other colonies. A series of setbacks resulted in Burgyone’s army of Regulars, Hessians, and Iroquois allies finding themselves stalled near Saratoga, and after his request for reinforcements from New York went unheeded, “Gentleman Johnnie” was forced to surrender his entire force. When news of the American victory reached Paris a few months later, it served as a prime motivator for France’s decision to enter the war. Saratoga indeed proved a crucial turning point in the war, though not in the way Burgoyne had imagined it.3
Beyond its military significance, the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga carried enormous symbolic weight, which was owed largely to the proclamation he issued as his army was pushing southward. Insisting that His Majesty’s forces were unstoppable, and threatening to destroy anyone who would hinder their progress, the proclamation was steeped in what critics derided as arrogance and false piety, such that when read retrospectively in light of his disastrous surrender, it appeared at best as a study in dramatic irony, and at worst as the sin that had invited divine retribution against him. Beginning with the genre’s obligatory list of titles, Burgoyne’s variation on the motif was at least as extravagant as that of his precursors: “By His EXCELLENCY JOHN BURGOYNE, Esquire, Lieutenant-General of his MAJESTY’s Forces in America, Colonel of the Queen’s Regiment of Light Dragoons, Governor of Fort-William, in North-Britain, one of the Representatives of the Commons of Great-Britain in Parliament, and commanding an Army and Fleet in an Expedition from Canada, &c. &c. &c.” The proclamation then goes on to describe Burgoyne’s mission less as a military operation than a humanitarian one: “The cause in which the British arms are thus exerted, applies to the most affecting interest of the human heart.” The aim was to defend the “suffering thousands” from the Revolutionary assemblies—what Burgoyne calls “the completest system of tyranny that ever GOD, in his displeasure, suffered for a time, to be exercised over a froward and stubborn generation.” He then goes on to say that as “the head of troops in the full powers of health, discipline, and valour, determined to strike where necessary, and anxious to spare where possible,” he demands the people’s full cooperation. More precisely, he announces: “I … invite and exhort all persons, in all places … to maintain such a conduct as may justify me in protecting their lands, habitations, and families.” To the “domestic, the industrious, the infirm, and even the timid inhabitants,” he offers protection as long as they remain quietly at home. Yet to those who persist in the rebellion, he issues a menacing threat: “I have but to give stretch to the Indian forces under my direction, and they amount to thousands, to overtake the hardened enemies of Great-Britain; … I trust I shall stand acquitted in the eyes of God and men, in denouncing and executing the vengeance of the state against the willful outcast.—The messengers of justice and of wrath await them in the field, and devastation, famine, and every concomitant horror, that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military duty must occasion, will bar the way to their return.”4
From the moment of its appearance in print, Burgoyne’s proclamation inspired numerous reactions, ranging from brief dismissals of his tone—“Burgoyne has issued out another pompous something (I don’t know what to call it) which may get to your hands before this”—to detailed analyses of his rhetoric: “Some men are pedantic, … others are foppish…. But Burgoyne’s turn, or artificial character, is that of a mountebank, in which every thing must be wonderful. In his proclamation, which has already been in most of the papers, he has handed himself out under as many titles as a High German doctor.” Others used Burgoyne’s threat to employ the “Indian forces” at his disposal to implicate him in the murder of Miss Jane McCrea, which occurred under Burgoyne’s ostensible protection a month after he issued the proclamation, and which was already becoming grist for anti-British and anti–Native American propaganda: “The following is Burgoyne’s pompous proclamation, under which many of the credulous have lost their scalps.” Given such responses to its rhetoric, it seems inevitable that the proclamation would be parodied in verse, and indeed it was, this time by none other than a sitting governor, William Livingston of New Jersey.5
Originally entitled simply “Proclamation,” and attributed to “A New-Jersey Man,” the poem would live on in cultural memory to become one of only two verse parodies included in Frank Moore’s influential 1856 anthology, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution. This may be due in part to the momentousness of the battle itself, which inspired numerous similar poems and songs with such titles as “The Fate of John Burgoyne” and “The Lamentations of General Burgoyne.” Yet it may also be owed to the comic brilliance of Livingston’s act of invalidating the ideological force of the original proclamation. This is nowhere more evident than in the opening lines, which capitalize on Burgoyne’s ceremonial inventory of titles to create a hilariously ridiculous character who is far from the calm, confident “gentleman” persona Burgoyne sought to project. Instead, the young general comes off as a boy so impatient for honors that he can scarcely restrain himself from blurting out all his achievements and ambitions:
By John Burgoyne, and Burgoyne John, Esquire,
And grac’d with titles still more higher,
For I’m Lieutenant-General too,
Of George’s troops both red and blue,
On this extensive Continent;
And of Queen Charlotte’s regiment
Of eight dragoons the Colonel;
And Governor eke of Castle Will;
And furthermore, when I am there,
In House of Commons there appear
(Hoping e’er [sic] long to be a Peer)
Being member of that virtuous band
Who always vote at North’s command;
Directing too the fleets and troops
From Canada as thick as hops;
And all my titles to display,
I’ll end with thrice etcaetera.
This passage executes its strategy of satiric diminishment of the original document through multiple poetic techniques: the breakneck pace of the tetrameter lines, the repetition of additives, such as “and,” “too,” and “eke,” and the triplet rhyme (there/appear/peer), which dramatizes a speaker who is utterly incapable of controlling himself as he frantically rehearses his pedigree. Such emphasis on exaggeration introduces, in turn, the charge of Burgoyne’s dishonesty, which will be further developed in later passages, such as when Burgoyne insists that his mission is one of benevolence, to save the people of New York from the “tyranny” of the rebellion: “But now inspir’d with patriot love / I come th’ oppression to remove; / To free you from the heavy clogg / Of every tyrant-demagogue.”6
Having established Burgoyne as capable of deceiving even himself of his true motives, Livingston abruptly shifts the tone from comic to deadly serious, as the promise of magnanimity gives way to boasts about the strength of his army and his willingness to use every available means to destroy those who would defy him. Retaining only the manic pace of the earlier part of the poem, Livingston turns to address the darker image of Burgoyne then circulating, as the cold-blooded general who is all too willing, as Burgoyne puts it in the original, to “give stretch to the Indian forces under [his] direction” (see Figure 4):
With the most christian spirit fir’d
And by true soldiership inspir’d,
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