Pride Has a Way of Holding Too Firm To History–America’s Unquenchable “Wildfire”

Verse 1

Brave men fought with the battle cry
Tears filled the eyes of their loved ones and their brothers in arms
And so it went for Joseph Warren
It should have been different
It could have been easy
His rank could have saved him
But a country unborn needs bravery
And it spread like wildfire

We open with the humble but noble beginnings of our nation. We are introduced here to a hero named Joseph Warren. Warren was a patriot from Massachusetts and served as that colony’s   congressional president. He was also a Major General in the Massachusetts Colonial Militia during the Revolutionary War. It is true that “his rank could have saved him” but he chose instead to fight along with his men in the Battle of Bunker Hill where he was killed. “A country unborn” did indeed “need bravery”, and Joseph Warren, like so many others who sacrificed much for the the grand American experiment in self-government and the promise of equality for all, provided it. “And it spread like wildfire.”

Verse 2

From the ashes grew sweet liberty
Like the seeds of the pines when the forest burns
They open up to grow and burn again
It should have been different
It could have been easy
But too much money rolled in to ever end slavery
The cry for war spread like wildfire

As that initial wildfire burned, liberty began to grow out of the ashes but, alas, it wasn’t the kind of liberty promised in the Declaration of Independence. As the nation’s economy began to grow and the textile mills began to sprout in the industrial North, a steady and cheap supply of cotton was sorely needed. The agricultural South was eager to supply it and, to keep that cotton cheap, slavery was the engine that supplied the power to deliver it. Everyone, North and South, was getting wealthy, except for the slaves. and too much money was being made to put an end to it. Eventually, some of America’s original social justice warriors began to call for a change, demanding that we finally begin living up to our own lofty ideals, and “the cry for war spread like wildfire.”

Verse 3

Civil War came, Civil War went
Brother fought the brother, the South was spent
But its true demise was hatred passed down through the years
It should have been different
It could have been easy
But pride has a way of holding too firm to history
And it burns like wildfire

In this verse, we finally face our “elephant in the room” with the four bloodiest years in our nation’s history. It is true, “the south was spent”, and it took a long time for them to recover and rebuild, but also rebuilt, in addition to the economy and infrastructure, was the institutionalized racism enforced by the rise of hate and terror from groups like the KKK. “It should have been different, it could have been easy, but pride”…pride never left the South and, when it became enmeshed with bitterness, fear, and resentment, a whole new level of hatred emerged in the form of intimidation and terror designed to keep the newly freed blacks from enjoying anything approaching the equality or enfranchisement promised them by the brand new 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. That pride held firm and burned like wildfire.

Verse 4

I was a born a southern son
In a small southern town where the rebels run wild
They beat their chests and they swear we’re going to rise again
It should have been different
It could have been easy
The day that old Warren died hate should have gone with him
But here we are caught in the wildfire