The Spirit of '76

Archibald Willard, an Ohio painter and Union army veteran from Wellington, painted three musicians marching into battle and called the picture Yankee Doodle. Shown at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, it became known as The Spirit of '76, and the name stuck.

Willard used his own father, a Baptist minister, as the model for the old drummer. The original hangs in Abbot Hall in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and the trio has been redrawn on posters and postage stamps ever since.

The first title was a joke turned around. British soldiers had sung "Yankee Doodle" to mock the ragged colonials, and the Americans took the tune for their own and marched to it.

This version keeps Willard's idea and rearranges the men. A white-haired drummer marches on the left, a younger drummer in a cocked hat beats the center drum, and on the right a fifer with a bandage around his head plays with a red sash at his waist. Behind them a starred flag, ripped ragged at the fly, streams against cloud and gunsmoke, and more soldiers with muskets come up through the haze. All three look straight ahead.