Three musicians march across a smoky battlefield: a white-haired drummer at the center, a boy drummer at the left looking back over his shoulder, and a fifer at the right in a striped headband, with a flag flying behind them. A fallen soldier lies in the foreground, and ranks of bayonets follow behind. Archibald Willard of Cleveland began it as a semi-humorous patriotic picture called Yankee Doodle, meant for the 1876 centennial exhibition in Philadelphia, on the suggestion of the photographer James F. Ryder.

The death of Willard's father before it was finished led him to make a serious painting. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History says Hugh Moser, a Civil War veteran, posed as the fifer, and Henry K. Devereux, son of General John H.

Devereux, as the drummer boy. After touring several cities, the painting got its present name in Boston, and General Devereux bought it. In 1880 he gave it to his native town of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Willard painted many copies, but the town calls this one the original.

It hangs in Abbot Hall in Marblehead.