We are all Yankee Doodle
The Literature of Army Veterans and America's Sense of Self. Part III.
“I was now, what I had long wished to be, a soldier; I had obtained my heart’s desire; it was now my business to prove myself equal to my profession.” - Joseph Plumb Martin
It might be a New England thing, but growing up in New Hampshire in the 1990s, one of the first tunes I learned was “Yankee Doodle". We sung it at school and heard it on visits to Revolutionary War reenactments. We mostly thought it was funny—the visual of sticking a feather in a hat and calling it macaroni—but it was always associated with feelings of pride as well. The Revolutionary War was very present in my community, with the American Independence Museum just a couple of towns over. What I did not know at the time, however, was that Yankee Doodle was more than a song, it was also the title of a book that had, since 1962, served as something of a source code for Americans’ understanding of the day-to-day life of soldiers in the Continental Army.
Source: Library of Congress.
Private Yankee Doodle was written by Army veteran Joseph Plumb Martin. Originally published in 1830 as A Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier, Martin’s memoir recounts his experience as a soldier. Martin joined the Army at age 15 and served first in 1776, and then after a brief period at home, again from 1777 to 1781, rising to the rank of Sergeant.
Source: American Battlefield Trust.
Relatively few Revolutionary War soldiers produced memoirs, and much of the historical literature centers on the Army’s leaders: George Washington, Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, etc. Martin’s memoir is distinct in that it centers on the experiences of the soldiers on the line. He had a part in some of the Army’s greatest victories, such as the siege of of Yorktown, and its most trying times: the early losses in New York and the trials of Valley Forge. Yet it is not just battles that appear in his memoir, but hunger, deprivation, and hardship.
“We had borne as long as human nature could endure, and to bear longer we considered folly.”
In addition to providing an essential complement to the existing Revolutionary War literature, overweighted as it was to the perspective of senior officers, Martin’s memoir is rich with details of camp life. Such insights and anecdotes give us much greater appreciation for what serving in the Army was like. When Martin’s memoir was republished in 1962 (as Private Yankee Doodle), it gained wide readership. And even while historians have critiqued Martin’s work as containing more than a few embellishments, its unique voice has continued to reach Americans over the years.
We are all Yankee Doodle
As historian Gordon Wood notes, the Revolutionary War is so important not just because it secured independence, but because it established the concept of American nationhood. “Since the identity of the United States as a nation remains unusually fluid and elusive, we Americans have had to look back repeatedly to the Revolution and the Founding (as we call it) in order to know who we are.”1 Our knowledge of the Founding era thus bears significantly on how we conceive of ourselves—the parameters of how we debate our national identity draw on what we understand to be the causes, motives, and goals behind the Revolution.
Joseph Plumb Martin’s memoir helps us to see more of the everyday Americans’ role in the Founding. In debates often dominated by arguments made in The Federalist Paper, letters from Jefferson and Madison, or debates from the first Congress, Martin brings in a voice much more relatable to the broad swathe of the population, then and now. His work is not the only one to do this, as we continue to discover new pieces of history that help us see a fuller picture of how the Revolutionary War era played out. But returning to print as it did in 1962, in time to help inform the nation’s bicentennial in 1976, Private Yankee Doodle reminded us that we are all Yankee Doodle; that while relatively few will step into shoes once occupied by a Washington or Hamilton, we all have a role to play in the success or failure of this American experiment.
For Martin, that was a life’s work. His gravestone begins with the simple line,“A Soldier of the Revolution”. Might we all be able to write the same on ours.
New Section - Lifting up Army writers on Substack
As part of this series on Army veteran authors and influencers, I’m going to highlight folks on Substack writing on similar themes. I welcome any and all input on this; I don’t have a fixed methodology for how I identify people and publications. For this week, I posed a question to the
chat and heard back from two writers:- is a former enlisted and NCO Army veteran whose writing brings in his experiences working in military intelligence alongside folks in infantry, cavalry and artillery. You can see a sneak peek of some of his writing here:
- is a historian whose passion is on lifting up forgotten people and events from history. Monique published a book, Suicide Jockeys: The Making of the WWII Combat Glider Pilot and you can find more of Monique’s writing here:
Additional Resources:
You can read an excerpt of Martin’s memoir through the Museum of the American Revolution here.
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If you’d like to write a newsletter post, share an educational resource about the Army, or lift up an opportunity for people to connect with the Army (e.g., an event, story, etc.), please contact Dan (dan@army250.us).
Wood, Gordon. (2011). The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States. New York, Penguin Books.
Thank you - great substack!