AMERICA'S PATRIOTIC HYMNAL: SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY, FRUITED PLAINS, AND THE COMING OF THE LORD

By Theresa A. Stevens

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate Studies Division of Ohio Dominican University Columbus, Ohio

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN LIBERAL STUDIES JULY 2014

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Acknowledgements

To Kathleen L. Riley, PhD., for her practical advice as a historian, and her benevolent encouragement as we put this work together.

To Stephen R. Thomas, PhD., for his insight, his expertise, and his joy concerning the project.

To Ann C. Hall, PhD., for teaching me to become a better writer.

To Ronald W. Carstens, PhD., for inspiring me as a student, a parent, and finally a colleague.

To Michael Tilghman Stevens, for his support and unwavering commitment.

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Introduction

It is the dawn of the Fourth of July in a small town in Ohio. Although nearly everyone has the day off, people are up early--there is a parade coming. Outside the flag-bedecked homes and the manicured lawns, the driveways are lined with the cars of the many guests who have returned to town for this special day. In front of the houses, horses have arrived in their trailers from outside the city, snorting, impatiently waiting as their owners groom them and decorate their manes with ribbons of red, white, and blue. Cell phone ringtones and the whistles of stray bottle rockets mingle with equine whinnies in an unlikely cacophony, as the aroma of coffee coming through the front screen doors mixes with the smells from the barnyard. The sensual incongruity is lost on the people of the neighborhood, because the parade and everything about it have been just this way as long as anyone can remember. Soon the horses will be hitched to the carriages that will carry the "Citizen of the Year," the mayor, and the school board members, as the people celebrate an old-fashioned Fourth. The neighbors set out tables on their lawns, since the parade goes right by every front door. The breakfast spreads include doughnuts and juice, and lox and bagels. Jews and Christians mingle on the lawns, for this holiday transcends sect: this is a day to celebrate the American Way of Life. There is a uniform for all--everyone is dressed in some combination of the colors of the flag, and some even have Old Glory depicted on their shirts or ball caps; the little girls are especially cute in their patriotic sundresses which were ordered online just for today, with ribbons in their hair that rival those in the horses' manes.

The day's activities are sacred; after the parade, the cookouts begin, and the high school reunions take place. There will be an ice cream social, complete with a military band playing Sousa marches, "God Bless America," and, of course, "The Star-Spangled Banner." As the perfect summer day draws to a close and the people return home after fireworks, they may be unaware 5 that they worshipped today. After all, they were in their most casual clothes, and they were outside most of the day--and they may have had a beer or two. Their sacred observance involved their civil religion. Americans celebrate their civic piety all through the year, but the high holy day is July Fourth, Independence Day. There are necessary symbols and rituals: parades, acknowledgement of military veterans, the presence of the flag everywhere, and in this small town, even an oration of the Declaration of Independence by a history buff, sweltering on the steps of the library, dressed as Benjamin Franklin. These rituals would not be complete without music, and as the band plays and the citizens sing from their lawn chairs, these Ohioans once again wish a happy birthday to America, asking God to bless "my home, sweet home." The nationalistic songs that we sing in these civic observances can be called "hymns," as America's oldest patriotic songs were based on European hymns from several centuries ago. This is an examination of the origins, ironies, and present day use of the songs in the American Patriotic

Hymnal.

- children with American flag, from a calendar cover 6

America's Patriotic Hymnal: Sweet Land of Liberty, Fruited Plains, and The Coming of the Lord

America's patriotic hymns are like great-grandmother's antique gravy boat: fondly remembered and even cherished--and yet not often taken out and examined. We might miss the porcelain heirloom if it were gone, but its existence would not cross our minds other than the occasional holiday or family celebration, and then its presence becomes important. In the

American citizenry, it is much the same concerning patriotic songs from our nation's earlier days--we would miss them if they no longer existed, but if we are being honest, their presence might only register as a flicker of a bygone time when we may have sung them in school, or we attempt to remember the lyrics at an Independence Day gathering, or we listen to a celebrity sing a medley of them in a patriotic special on public television. They are put away in the storage cabinet of our mind for reappearance at some civic event, a surge of nationalism at the triumph of an Olympic athlete, or at a presidential inauguration or funeral. If we pay attention, we may marvel at the apocalyptic images in the lyrics and the virtuous themes the words present of a land that is nothing less than the Kingdom of God come on earth. These words are indeed marvelous, and their presence in hymn format suggests the voices of the nation worshipping in collective unity of thought. But for all our hopeful sentiments of unity surrounding the songs of our

American patriotism, the lyrics and even the melodies of these hymns carry inherent divisive contradictions: that for a country breaking away from the British monarchy, Rev. Samuel F.

Smith chose the tune of "God Save the King" for "America"; and that the melody of "The Battle

Hymn of the Republic" comes from a song celebrating John Brown, the insurrectionist who was hanged for his raid on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry. Furthermore, the lyrics of the "Battle

Hymn of the Republic" represent not the entire republic at the time of the Civil War, but only the 7 northern Anglo-Saxon version of the American experience in the 1860s. These songs, written to inspire and unite, also provided opportunities for parody and the creation of alternative versions for those who were excluded from the sentiments expressed in the words. I will argue that examples of America's patriotic hymns contain ironic elements that can be fully appreciated by close readings of the lyrics in light of the time in which they were written and in subsequent history. I will also propose that although the singing of patriotic songs may be in decline, these hymns, threads in the fabric of American thought, will endure, because the republican ideals which they extol present a goal, if not yet achieved, eternally hoped for in the hearts and voices of Americans.

Our country's civic piety, which is commonly referred to as America's civil religion, sprang from Puritan roots, casting America as a New Israel, and blending the ideals of the

American Revolution and the Enlightenment, writes David W. Stowe, according to his book

How Sweet the Sound. This love of country, transcending traditional religion, has its sacred places, including Independence Hall, Mount Vernon, Ground Zero, and the monuments in the

District of Columbia. The nation's saints are Washington, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and its primary sacramental symbol is the flag. The sacred documents include the original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; the rituals are the Pledge of

Allegiance, the habit of a politician saying "God Bless the United States of America," the currency stating "In God We Trust," and the citizens joining in communal song on civic occasions such as Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Memorial Day (249). On these hallowed days, Americans open the patriotic hymnal and sing "God Bless America," "My

Country, "Tis of Thee," and "America the Beautiful" -- and sometimes hymns with denominational roots yet universal appeal, such as "Amazing Grace." 8

Americans' love of country and devotion to its national symbols led G.K. Chesterton in

What I Saw in America to describe the United States as "a nation with the soul of a church." His travel to America exposed for him differences between the culture of the States and that of his native England, honing his view with the statement "America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed" (9). This creed, based on the Declaration of Independence, asserts that all people are equal, with clear recognition that the Creator gives the authority for the government's administration of justice. These ideas inspired theologian and historian Sidney Mead, in his essay 'The "Nation With the Soul of a Church"' to examine this civic piety, unique to a country that was intent upon having its central authority neutral and tolerant of all religious sects. Mead is careful to cast this neutrality not as "secularization," but as "de-sectarianism," an important difference. It means that America's civil religion is not anti-religious, but a "cosmopolitan, inclusive, universal theology" (59). And so it follows that rituals and songs which celebrate the nation in times of success and comfort it in times of sorrow invoke the divine in a way that Mead says plumbs for the universal general notions of religion. The founders realized this was compatible with religious freedom. Yet for most of American history, civic piety was exclusively Protestant. It broadened eventually to include Catholics and Jews.

Author and clergyperson Diane Butler Bass, in her book Broken We Kneel, asserts that the United States will always have a sense of civic piety--a public expression of its transcendent and theological dimensions. Today a meaningful civil religion must represent what we have become as a nation: deeply ecumenical, with faiths of the whole world (8). Peter Gardella, in

American Civil Religion: What Americans Hold Sacred, agrees that our civil religion has

Christian, Protestant roots, but he adds that we follow models of ancient Rome as well as ancient

Israel. He points out that if an ancient Roman could be transported to the Lincoln Memorial, he 9 would believe Americans worship their dead emperors. The theoretical Roman might not appreciate, however, the genius by which Lincoln's theology embraced the civil religion and employed the God of the Bible to expand the views of the citizenry (7). The monuments, texts, and symbols of our nation and the values they represent include a vast amount of historical wealth which include ironies when closely analyzed. This paper will focus on those ironies in the segment of American nationalistic expression which is perhaps most personal to each citizen: patriotic song.

Collective singing provides an opportunity for people to actively express solidarity and shared feeling, according to Eric Clarke in Music and Mind in Everyday Life. Clarke notes that this collective action could be done by group speaking or dancing, but because of physical limitations, communal song is particularly effective to coordinate a large group of people in a manifestation of social action that is both structured and rewarding. Clarke goes on to say that music can be a channel for unfocused and unarticulated emotions that people experience in shocking or bewildering times (6). To enable citizens to process these complex feelings, patriotic songs are an integral part of ceremonies held not only in times of civic celebration but also during national crises.

Schoolchildren in the United States often learn patriotic songs in their American History lessons or as part of their music curriculum. Their teachers may introduce "The Star-Spangled

Banner" in association with the War of 1812, but young people today, raised in a visual culture, are more familiar with the national anthem as the song sung on television by a pop star to signal the start of a major sporting event. These pupils might hear "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in relation to the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, and they probably could sing a robust parody that includes images of mean teachers and burning schools, but it is doubtful that they know 10 much about the historical figure John Brown and his relationship to the song. In these young peoples' world of electronic devices and headphones, where individuals retreat from the masses into their networks of selective isolation choosing from thousands of pieces of music to play, it may be difficult for them to imagine groups of people who not only all knew the same song by heart, but could confidently join in for several additional verses as well. If this is surprising, then imagine the shock today's millennials would experience when at a moment's notice a group would willingly join their voices in a communal song which urged them to march for a cause, protest an injustice, make a demonstration of solidarity, or advance to war. The stories of the origins of these songs spark some interest on the surface, yet upon further examination we will see that the lyrics of some of our best-known patriotic hymns contain paradoxical elements surprising for art that was meant to be inclusive. They did not represent all Americans, and divisions of race, region, and relevance caused these songs to be received with the dichotomies of joy and sorrow, love and hatred, respect and repugnance.

As people sing together on civic occasions to share public emotion about their nationhood, the choice of songs changes over time, reflecting shifts in our country's vision and its values as we confront historical change. The songs chosen here, presented chronologically

(with the exception of "Amazing Grace"), follow the history of the United States of America from the time of the colonies up to the present. They display a unity of patriotic thought up to the Civil War, but then the messages of the songs fragment as the nation struggled with disparate identities and reconciliation. There is a unity again in the early twentieth century as citizens experience the miracles of industrialization, capitalism, and progress. They express a desire for a national anthem, choosing among a wealth of nationalistic hymns including "America the

Beautiful," the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and the "Star-Spangled Banner." A divergence 11 appears again after the Great Depression, and we will see the struggle between two versions of

America presented in the contrasting songs "God Bless America" and the piece meant to be its satire: "This Land is Your Land." As the country moves through the turbulent years of the civil rights movement and to the present, the nation's songs again diverge, this time through the lens of politics, the left declaring "We Shall Overcome" and the right demanding "God Bless the

U.S.A." We will examine ironies in our national hymns, the histories of the lyrics and tunes, and the reasons we seem to need these old songs in modern times. We will look at the present-day use of the patriotic hymnal and determine the elements of a nationalistic anthem that give meaning to the expression of private individual emotions in mass public settings.

Through all the tumult and the strife I hear a distant ringing It sounds an echo in my soul How can I keep from singing? (Traditional)

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"Chester" - lyrics by William Billings

Let tyrants shake their iron rod And slav'ry clank her galling chains We'll fear them not; we trust in God, New England's God forever reigns.

Just before Easter in April 1783, the news came that America's Revolution had won independence for the colonists. To commemorate the victory, the occasion was marked by music written by William Billings, easily the best-known and most prolific composer of the time.

Billings, a Boston tanner as well as a musical artist, is described by historians as a Puritan who was familiar with the ways of the world--a man "with a short leg, one eye, a withered arm, a stentorian voice, a habit of taking enormous amounts of snuff" (Armenta 8). Billings wrote an anthem with these lines:

And all the Continent shall sing: Down with this earthly King No King but God…may the Natives bow to our Royal King. …may the earth acknowledge God is the King. Amen, Amen, Amen. (Stowe 51)

Throughout Billings' works the millennial vision of America shines as a reworking of the

Puritan idea of the colonies as a New Israel, replete with images of the wolf lying down with the lamb, and the recovered remnant of God's chosen starting over and creating a new Jerusalem in the new land. The British were soldiers of Satan, Egyptian counterparts who oppressed the chosen people, the colonists, in a righteous battle. George Washington was the American Moses, and, Stowe writes, it is no wonder that Benjamin Franklin proposed a design for the Great Seal of the United States which depicted Moses dividing the Red Sea, and Jefferson designed a picture of the children of Israel marching in the desert (53). Billings, a patriot, who had in 1770 produced The New-England Psalm Singer, a book of 120 original compositions, was the perfect and obvious choice to bring out new, pristine songs of independence, at a time when most 13

Americans were only familiar with European tunes and sacred songs. Billings had a flair for rhetoric, and his nationalistic songs became well-known propaganda among the patriots. Among

Billings' hundreds of songs was a famous paraphrase of Psalm 137, which begins: "By the

Rivers of Watertown we sat down & wept / when we remember'd thee O Boston" (Stowe 58-59).

His best-known composition was "Chester," a song decrying the monarchy and declaring trust in the true God, the God of New England. It was sung to the tune "Old Hundredth," commonly known as the Doxology:

Let tyrants shake their iron rod And slav'ry clank her galling chains We'll fear them not; we trust in God, New England's God forever reigns.

The "slav'ry" and "galling chains" are here related to the oppression of the monarchy, and yet among the plantations of the south and all those involved in the African slave trade, there lies an inherent irony --that this song would be sung all through the colonies, often by slaveholders who did not consider their behavior in the least galling.

"Chester" is the most nationalistic of Billings' works, says Joseph Armenta in his article

"Colonial Nationalism in the Music of William Billings." In the song, he justifies the Revolution as the divine plan of God, and sets the cornerstone for the Manifest Destiny Doctrine. By his placing it in the collection The New England Psalm Singer, he added theological heft, and assured that it would be regularly sung as a hymn all across the new country. Furthermore,

Armenta states that since the work was published by popular revolutionary figure Paul Revere, it was considered a political extension of the war, a quintessential example of the work of a self- trained musician, whose parents had come to the New World to find religious freedom, a man who was the embodiment of the values of the Revolution (9). 14

Billings' prolific and nationalistic success was not to last. As the years moved farther away from the Revolution, his simple tunes and open harmonies seemed barbarous and uncouth to those Americans in artistic circles who were pursuing a new musical sophistication.

Ironically, the influential musicians of the day turned back to British psalmody. Stowe writes that Billings' tunes turned up in the mid-nineteenth century music of shaped-note compilations, a style of notation used to simplify reading music for common people, which is still kept active today among some sects and historians (63). Yet after a bloody revolution to establish independence from England, musicians in the United States began a return to familiar melodies from across the Atlantic.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" - lyrics by Francis Scott Key, 1814

See the power of national emblems. Some stars, lilies, leopards, a crescent, a lion, an eagle, or other figure which came into credit God knows how, on an old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind on a fort at the ends of the earth, shall make the blood tingle under the rudest or the most conventional exterior. The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics!--Ralph Waldo Emerson "The Poet," 1844

The patriotic hymn which has its focus on the central symbol of our civil religion, the flag, was originally titled "The Defence of Fort McHenry." As Peter Gardella writes in

American Civil Religion, the battle of Baltimore on September 13, 1814 came at a crucial moment in the history of the United States--the British desired a treaty which would end expansion into Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, and they wanted the Mississippi River to be considered an international waterway. Just three weeks earlier, British troops had burned

Washington, D.C. On the stormy night when Fort McHenry was defended against thousands of

British rockets, the future of the republic hung in the balance (Gardella 151). As the dawn 15 broke, an enormous flag was raised to show that the Americans had won the battle of Baltimore.

Francis Scott Key, a lawyer, was being detained until the battle's conclusion, as he negotiated freedom for an American doctor who was being held prisoner by the British. From his vantage point on a boat eight miles away from the fighting, he witnessed the entire attack as a prisoner of the fleet. His lyrics reflect not only his anxiety at the bombardment and his relief at the sight of the flag, but also contain religious language, reflecting his interest in the clergy, a vocation which he considered before choosing to study the law (Gardella 153). This is a patriotic hymn,

Crawford says, which is not addressed to God, although it is asking for His blessing. This hymn involves Americans addressing each other with a collective ideal of nationhood (241).

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O Say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream: "Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more/ Their blood has wiped out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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Oh! Thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God is our trust." And the star-spangled banner forever shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

As we have seen before, British tunes during this era were familiar, and so a tavern song by British composer John Stafford Smith called "To Anacreon in Heaven" became the basis for

Key's words. The tune, which celebrated wine and women, was very popular in America in the

1780s and had been used by Thomas Paine for a song he wrote in 1798 called "Adams and

Liberty." Gardella writes that Francis Scott Key would surely have known the song, and since revolutions were born in taverns it is no surprise that the circumstances that gave birth to the tune for Key's war anthem involved a drinking song. Some historians call the War of 1812 the second

Revolution, and "The Star-Spangled Banner" is the anthem of that war. The third verse, although seldom sung, expresses hatred toward the British and their "foul footsteps pollution." Gardella recounts that every man at Fort McHenry received a handbill of the song on the day of the victory, and the song spread right along with the news that Baltimore had not fallen (154-155).

The United States had been invaded and yet had not been defeated, and there was a song to celebrate the victory.

An irony which may not be obvious when focusing on the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled

Banner" is the fact that the song for which we rise to our feet on multiple occasions throughout the year is difficult to sing, at least for most of the citizenry who do not have trained voices. The range is wide, more than an octave and a half, beyond that of the average person. The lyrics are impossible for many to manage. People tend to remember when singers fumble the words--

Robert Goulet never lived down his failure in performing the song in 1965 before the 17

Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston championship fight (Gardella 157). The climactic phrase of the song is on the highest note, on the word "free," which is a difficult vowel sound to sing in the upper range. The music is keyed for ease of instrumental playing--not for vocalists--which usually puts the song in the key of B-flat, difficult for anyone without a professionally trained voice.

From the 1880s, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played on naval bases and warships for the raising and lowering of the flag. President Hoover signed a bill into law in 1931 which declared the song the national anthem of the United States. Many opposed the idea, including the New York Herald Tribune editors, who said it had "words that nobody can remember to a tune that nobody can sing" (Gardella 156). Yet this patriotic hymn has endured for two hundred years.

"America" - lyrics by Samuel Francis Smith

My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims' pride, From ev'ry mountainside Let freedom ring!

My native country, thee, Land of the noble free, Thy name I love; I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills; My heart with rapture thrills, Like that above.

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Let music swell the breeze, And ring from all the trees Sweet freedom's song; Let mortal tongues awake; Let all that breathe partake; Let rocks their silence break, The sound prolong.

Our fathers' God to Thee, Author of liberty, To Thee we sing. Long may our land be bright, With freedom's holy light, Protect us by Thy might, Great God our King.

Early American patriotic songs based on popular British tunes included "Yankee

Doodle," "The Star-Spangled Banner," and the melody for "America," although the colonists' lyrics to these songs often turned upside-down any sentiment toward the crown. "God Save the

King" (1744) was lyrically adapted in the colonies to frown on monarchy and praise America's liberty as ""God Save America," "God Save Our Thirteen States," and even "God Save George

Washington" (Branham 625). This tune celebrating British royalty found its way to one of the most popular patriotic songs in the history of the United States. "America" (or, "My Country,

'Tis of Thee") premiered during a time of tremendous interest and growth in public education, particularly music education. Lowell Mason, a musician and educator, came on the scene in the

1820s, a time when there was a great amount of interest in forming singing societies--places to enjoy singing music outside of the church. These societies met in lodges and private clubs, and were mostly male. Mason's interest began in sacred music, yet he saw untapped resources in creating music in places other than church settings. He wanted to expand communal music through males and females singing together, improving their vocal skills, and branching into secular song. His career became devoted to teaching proper singing technique, and his 19 organizational abilities developed a structure in a previously disorganized part of American life.

His work greatly influenced singing in public education and for this he became known as the

"father" of public school music teaching (Crawford 139-140). Thanks to the career of Lowell

Mason, school children learned one of the most popular patriotic songs of the nineteenth century and perhaps of all our nation's history: "America."

Mason commissioned Rev. Samuel Francis Smith to translate a group of German song books for one of his school choirs, and Smith came upon a melody of "great simplicity" which he later said he did not recognize as the tune of "God Save the King." Inspired to write a patriotic hymn, Smith scribbled new lyrics on a scrap of paper over the course of half an hour. The year was 1831, a time of revolutions in Europe, and violent crime involving slave rebellions and massive immigration in America. Many were uncertain of the future of the young republic, and when Rev. Lyman Beecher delivered the prayer at the service where "America" premiered, he and Smith hoped for a hymn which would inspire civic virtue and service to the state during a time of chaos. The July 4, 1831 performance in Boston so impressed the headmasters of private schools that they hired Mason to develop a music curriculum which Boston eventually adopted for its public schools, and this in turn was quickly implemented by schools throughout the country. Robert James Branham, in his article '"Of Thee I Sing": Contesting "America"', reports that Mason became the nation's superintendent of school music instruction, and since the simple song "America" was in the collections the schools used, soon it was sung everywhere (625).

The school music movement promoted song as a way to impart civic virtue. By the end of the nineteenth century, "America" was the opening or closing song for holiday and civic celebrations, in both public schools and Sunday schools. One of the striking characteristics of the lyrics is the author's use of first person. "My Country! 'tis of thee…Of thee I sing." Smith's 20 decision to use first person gives the song a special power, as the singer addresses the nation.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, a Harvard classmate of Smith, said: "If he had said 'Our Country' the hymn would not have become immortal, but that 'my' was a masterstroke" (Branham 626).

Singers of "America" express a nationalism that is their own.

For many Americans, there was a gaping contrast between the noble principles of the lyrics of "America" and social reality. The immigrants who sang "my native country, thee" were hardly the indigenous people who became marginalized as the country expanded westward.

Branham states that the song was a touchstone for political protests and parodies, and points out that more than sixty alternate versions are known, such as this one from an 1839 anti-slavery publication:

My country, 'tis of thee, Stronghold of slavery, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Where men man's rights deride, From ev'ry mountainside Thy deeds shall ring! (624)

During the Civil War, alternate versions promoted emancipation: "Let Freedom's banner wave, / Till there not be a slave." In later years, the song was appropriated for the temperance, suffrage, and labor movements. Here is a version from a labor campaign to shorten work hours:

Ye noble sons of toil Who ne'er from work recoil, take up the lay; Loud let the anthem's roar Resume from shore to shore Till time shall be no more. Eight hours a day. (Crawford 451)

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Branham points out that if Smith's lyrics "fixed" the character of America, alternate versions portrayed America as "still becoming" (640). The sweet land of liberty was yet to be found or achieved. For many, the country was not a land bright with "freedom's holy light." This sentiment was exposed on a large scale in 1939 as World War II loomed in the American future.

Marian Anderson was a brilliant misfit. White people could not place the majestic

African-American contralto in their vision of racial inferiority, and those of her own race could not comprehend her high standing in the realm of European classical music. The working-class

Philadelphia girl from humble origins became an international star during the Depression, and the many ironies in her remarkable life and career culminated on an Easter Sunday in 1939, in a historic moment centered around the song "America."

- Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial Concert

The social and professional scene of 1930s America, complex as it was, still had some absolutes, and one of the most difficult for African-Americans was the challenge of succeeding in a segregated society. Raymond Arsenault, in his book The Sound of Freedom, reports that "no amount of talent, creativity, and hard work, it seemed, could overcome the obstacles of race."

There were few black celebrities, very few in the professions; no judicial positions were held by 22 blacks, and only the lowest political offices were open to them. The National Football League was whites-only until 1946 and in the 1930s, of all the sports only professional boxing was mixed (68). African-American business enterprises were not covered in the press, and in the art world, especially that of classical music, blacks were essentially absent (Arsenault 75). Into this time in American life came a young woman with the gift of a remarkable voice, who was raised singing in her church, and who advanced, through her educational opportunities and her work ethic to become what one critic called the "Voice of the Century." Marian Anderson was unique in multiple ways: she sang in many languages in her concerts, something other singers did not attempt; as a contralto, she ventured into the high soprano range, unheard of for professional musicians; and although she had the credentials to be one of the world's great divas, she eschewed that persona and instead showed grace and humility in her public appearances

(Arsenault 108-109). That grace served her well in 1939 as she anticipated a performance in

Washington, D.C., in Constitution Hall, and her managers were astounded to hear that because the venue had a policy of engaging white artists only, Anderson would not be allowed to appear.

The Daughters of the American Revolution, a patriotic organization who scheduled the Hall, would deny an opportunity to have the greatest American singer appear there, based on the racial policy. Anderson, on a tour singing throughout the country, did her best to focus on her music and stay out of the scheduling conflict, but her agents were amazed that an artist who had appeared in almost every other world capital was barred from her own nation's capital. She had just been asked by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to sing for King George VI and Queen

Elizabeth during their upcoming summer visit; Anderson was to be welcomed by royalty, but spurned by Constitution Hall, a venue which takes its name from a document guaranteeing freedom (Arsenault 139). This was politically sensitive for Mrs. Roosevelt; the Daughters of 23 the American Revolution, a conservative and mostly Republican organization, had extended membership to the First Lady on the basis of her Revolutionary ancestors, and she gladly accepted, hoping that she might help her husband, as the DAR was powerful, and could oppose him and his agenda (Arsenault 122).

Anderson's managers were forced to find a creative solution quickly, and the result became an event preserved on newsreels and in history books. They decided to have a free, open-air concert at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. Although the Lincoln Memorial would in the future host mammoth crowds, this was a shocking proposal in 1939. The memorial was dedicated in 1922, and Arsenault states that the National Park Service and Department of

Interior had never before granted a permit for a large gathering there (147). On Easter Sunday,

April 9, 1939, Marian Anderson appeared before seventy-five thousand people. Rather than open the concert with "The Star-Spangled Banner," Arsenault says her agents chose "America," because of the ironic implications of the lyrics speaking of a "sweet land of liberty" where the world-class artist was not free to occupy the stage (154). As she stood below Lincoln's statue, she sang "America." In a now-famous video clip, she altered the lyrics slightly to address the nation in an act of resistance and a call to action--she substituted "To thee we sing" for "Of thee I sing" (Anderson, YouTube). After the concert, Anderson refused to sing in segregated venues, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR (Hobson 446). The greatest voice of her generation, who dressed in Parisian couture gowns as she appeared in the grandest opera houses in Europe, had not been considered worthy to be on stage in America's capital.

24

- newspaper printing of the John Brown song

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" - lyrics by Julia Ward Howe

A full comprehension of the inherent ironies in "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" includes understanding the history of the tune, which is usually referred to as "John Brown's

Body," but which has its roots in an older melody. This tune comes from an 1807 camp- meeting hymnal compiled by Stith Mead, son of a wealthy Georgia planter, who, like many men during this time, became an itinerant Methodist minister, in the Williamsburg, Virginia circuit.

The folk hymn "Say Brothers" or "O Brothers" had these lyrics: "O Brothers will you meet me /

On Canaan's happy shore. There we'll shout and give Him glory / On Canaan's happy shore." 25

This was sung in camp meetings around Kentucky in the early 1800s. The tune is repetitive, sits easily in the voice due to its simplicity and range, and has a rhythm that lends itself to marching.

The Union soldiers based "John Brown's Body" on this hymn tune, which became the tune for

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (Stauffer 17-18). This happy, welcoming song was to become a defiant call to war.

John Brown and his story add to the internal irony of the "Battle Hymn" since the folk song "John Brown's Body" was sung by both the North and the South, in versions to either celebrate or deride the man. John Brown was, depending on one's point of view, a scoundrel or hero, a lunatic or patriot, a terrorist--or even a martyr. His passion in the war on slavery led him to direct a guerilla band in the Pottawatomie massacre in 1856, where he abducted five proslavery settlers and split their skulls open with cutlasses (Menand 2). His downfall came at the raid on the Federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, but by then he had enlisted the support of many elite thinkers of Boston society, as the abolitionist movement came to a head. C. Vann

Woodward, in his book The Burden of Southern History, records that the armory invasion was poorly planned and a dismal failure, but that Brown and his twenty-one followers killed one

United States Marine and four men of Harper's Ferry, including the mayor and a Negro freeman

(45). Following the insurrection, many of the public thought Brown was insane; still others saw him as carrying on a sublime mission that was admirable as well as treasonous in his passionate pursuit to eradicate slavery. His support from the "cream of Northern society" makes it difficult to dismiss the raid as mere lunacy. His supporters, the so-called Secret Six, included scholar

Theodore Parker; philanthropist Gerrit Smith; manufacturer George L. Stearns; pastor Thomas

Wentworth Higginson; Franklin B. Sanborn, a protégé of Emerson--and philanthropist and physician Samuel Gridley Howe, husband of Julia Ward Howe (49-50). When Brown was 26 awaiting his hanging for the insurrection, the Secret Six, panic-stricken that they might be indicted for treason, mostly fled or covered up their involvement. Other influential northerners, safe from direct collusion with Brown, celebrated him and what they saw as a heroic mission in the name of the abolitionist movement. Thoreau compared his execution with the crucifixion of

Christ, pronouncing Harper's Ferry as the best news the country ever had, and Emerson painted

Brown as a saint in lectures where he said he "made the gallows glorious like a cross"

(Woodward 53-54).

John Brown and his infamous raid illuminate the dire contrasts that surrounded the Civil

War and the divergent views concerning slavery. Using the folk song that embodied the John

Brown legend as the basis for "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" carried with it not only a singable tune, but also a strong Progressive mythology that the north was endowed with a righteous crusade, and the lyric poem by Julia Ward Howe would forever be joined with the ironies of John Brown and his history. To the conservative northerners, John Brown was a martyr, the "Moses of the North" who was a hero not because he was an abolitionist, but because he died as God's instrument in trying to restore virtue and order to the land (Clifford 141). That the "Battle Hymn" is set to the tune of "John Brown's Body" is particularly fitting, understanding that the north's nationalistic fervor reflected in Howe's lyrics was also embodied in the legend behind the tune.

John Stauffer and Benjamin Soskis, in their book The Battle Hymn of the Republic--The

Biography of the Song That Marches On, refer to the John Brown song as one whose origin developed organically, sprung from the souls of the fighting men. Like many of the songs that survived from the Civil War, it was easily sung, based on a familiar hymn tune, and repetitive: 27

"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave / His soul's marching on!" (44-45). Slaves in the field sang: "My poor body lies a-mouldering in the clay / While my soul goes marching on!"

Union sympathizers threatened: "We'll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree." Abolitionists published the song, adding a chorus of "Glory, Hally, Hallelujah" (the second "glory" was added later) and when the sheet music was printed, the public was already well-acquainted with the song (Stauffer 48-52). "John Brown's Body" became the most well-loved song of the army encampments from Massachusetts to the entire Army of the Potomac. Stauffer points out that there was a shared atmosphere between the revival camp meetings and the military encampments: the energy was similar, there was a conflict that was both military and spiritual, and there was an intimacy among strangers. In fact, one observer called the military camps

"camp meetings where the ladies are minus" (53). This song was a perfect bridge between the

Methodist hymn and a war song, spread by a folk oral tradition. No one seemed to mind the irony of a Christian singing of hanging "Jeff Davis…On Canaan's happy shore!" and when

African-Americans sang it at the top of their voices, the pursuit of racial justice mingled with violence (Stauffer 59). The song was ripe for becoming the North's war anthem.

General George B. McClellan, Commander of the Washington area's Union forces, was training the Grand Army of the Potomac in the autumn of 1861. On November 18th, Samuel and

Julia Ward Howe were invited to watch the maneuvers with Governor John Andrews and their friend James Freeman Clarke. During the Union forces' training, the Confederate soldiers attacked unexpectedly and the Union army and the spectators had to hastily retreat. Once out of danger, to pass the time on the long road back, the civilians and the soldiers joined their voices in well-known songs, one of which was "John Brown's Body." (One can only imagine the irony of

Samuel Gridley Howe's presence during the singing after he denied involvement in the Harper's 28

Ferry raid.) Clarke remarked to Julia Ward Howe that she should "write some good words for that stirring tune." That night, in her hotel, she awoke and began to write, completely pouring out the lyrics in her head onto paper so that she could capture the stanzas she felt were divinely inspired (Clifford 143-145).

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my condemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat: Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.

To fully comprehend the use of religious imagery throughout the lyrics of "The Battle

Hymn of the Republic" it is helpful to appreciate the significance of the scriptures to Julia Ward

Howe and to understand the ways the Bible impacted her daily life since she was a child. Julia's father, banker Samuel Ward, had married Julia Cutler and settled his Protestant family in a large house in New York during the 1820s. Their daughter Julia was an accomplished woman of her time--well-to-do, properly educated, a musician and a poet, and popular in the society of the 29 early nineteenth century. Young Julia Ward, ever mindful of the discipline required to be a good evangelical Christian, went so far as to have her sisters tie her to her chair so that she wouldn't leave her desk until her studies were finished. Consistent with her religious upbringing, she saw the Bible as her path to salvation, and she read, studied, and memorized passages every day, morning noon, and night--even sleeping with the Bible under her pillow to protect her from the devil (Clifford 30-31). This pious child was more than familiar with the scriptural scenes of the final judgment of mankind. Her pervasive use of the apocalyptic references from the book of

Revelation in the lyrics of the "Battle Hymn" are compared to her millennial vision as Stauffer so aptly describes in his book on the song:

In the poem's opening lines, with their archaic King James phrasing…Howe establishes

herself at the juncture between secular and sacred time; she presents the scenes of the

capital's militarization not merely as epochal moments in the history of the nation but as

millennial portents. The image of God's winepress, which Howe borrowed from

Revelation (14:19-20), communicates temporal ripeness; the iniquity of those who have

sinned against God during the long reign of the Beast has run its course and will now be

reaped through the "terrible swift sword: (the analogue of the "sharp sword" with which

God "Shall smite the nations [Revelation 19:14]), which Howe equates with the forces of

the Union. (87)

She goes on to liken the war to the Apocalypse, and the arrival of the North with the coming of the Lord. The "righteous sentence" is the defeat of the Confederacy as their men's hearts are sifted before God's judgment seat (Stauffer 87). For a people well-versed in the fire and brimstone of the second Great Awakening, these were certainly "fightin' words," and Howe 30 expresses in her lyrics the conviction that God was fighting on the side of the Union. The text is from both the Old and New Testaments, with most references coming from the book of

Revelation. In the mid-nineteenth century, Stauffer says, religious thought turned to post- millennialism--not focusing on Christ's second coming, but on the one thousand year reign after

Jesus' return. God "marching on" was consistent with post-millennialism, with crises representing the coming Apocalypse. The "trumpet that shall never call retreat" mixes the temporal reality of the fighting Union troops with the apocalyptic final judgment (86-87). For their part, the Confederates also saw the war as a struggle between light and darkness. They saw the North as a fallen Babylon, with the Union forces representing the antichrist and the Beast of the same biblical passages of Revelation. This was a holy war on both sides, and John Brown was invoked by the North and the South. The bloody price of war was seen as God's chastisement for the national sin of slavery, and as a result, the wages of sin caused profound suffering on both sides. The shift in millennial thought from revivals, evangelism, and reform to violence made the soldiers martyrs and their camps "altars" (Stauffer 89-91). The song's final verse "transfigures" a wrathful God into Christ among the beautiful lilies, as the North identifies itself with the victor of the final judgment, bringing God's kingdom on earth, sustaining

America's exceptionalism.

No other wartime document captures so well the sentiments of the North in the first year of the Civil War (Clifford 146). The public saw the North as the savior of the nation, crushing the serpent of the South. The "Say Brothers" revivalists and the John Brown legend came together with Howe's lyrics, representing a first person view of the resolute North's vision of

America fighting in its greatest struggle. Stauffer says it was no longer Julia's poem; it became the nation's poem (84), albeit the North's vision of the nation. Howe, a wife and mother, by 31 contributing her poem, served as a prophetess, an acceptable role for a woman in her position to contribute to the war effort. Stauffer points out that by writing the piece in a domestic setting, supporting the manly heroes of the war, she enhanced her position publicly while declining the celebrity of authorship, sharing a symmetry with the nation: both she and her country were divinely appointed, called to an exceptional greatness. The conviction that she had a divine calling is in keeping with abolitionist thought, and is yet another link to John Brown. As previously stated, an even deeper connection to John Brown came through her husband, Samuel

Gridley Howe. Howe was a doctor who worked at the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and he was a philanthropist. His aid to the Greeks in their revolution against the Turks caused him to be awarded the Chevalier of the Greek Legion of Honor, and resulted in his nickname: "Chev."

Chev Howe and the other men of the Secret Six were so impressed by Brown and his crusade against slavery that they risked their reputations to support him, although once their involvement was discovered they made great pains to distance themselves from the attack--some of them, including Chev, even denying their support and fleeing to Canada. For her part, Julia did not believe that her husband was implicated in the raid (Clifford 134). The day of Brown's execution was a day of mourning in the North, as the antislavery and abolitionist public saw their martyr hanged. Chev described Brown as a "redemptor of the colored race, much as Christ gave His life to save mankind" (Stauffer 79-81). Hordes of Northerners agreed, and did not see a contradiction in the fact that the murderous work of John Brown and the salvation of mankind is mingled in this song through the catchy camp meeting tune ever associated with a man considered by many to be a terrorist.

Clifford reports that Howe was paid five dollars when the poem was published in 1862.

It was probably first sung at a celebration of Washington's birthday, and when President Lincoln 32 heard it after the Battle of Gettysburg, he was reported to have said "sing it again" through the applause. Ralph Waldo Emerson admired the poem and wrote that he wished Massachusetts could produce such a poetess as Howe (147). Howe wrote other poems, essays, and books, but none are as well-known as her apocalyptic poem that has led troops to war and has inspired complete books written about the song.

The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" remained the popular favorite for celebrating sectional reconciliation and declaring the nationalism felt throughout the McKinley administration and that of Theodore Roosevelt, who said the "Battle Hymn" was his favorite song. At the beginning of the war with Spain, the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was printed in newspapers across the nation. Its prominence made it an object ripe for parody, and as the

United States became more of an occupying power in the Pacific, anti-imperialists wrote:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the waves As He died to make men holy We will fight to make men slaves. (Stauffer 134-135)

Mark Twain wrote a parody in 1901 that was found in his papers after his death. Stauffer states that Twain was an admirer of both the "Battle Hymn" and Julia Ward Howe. He refrained from publishing it, but in his version he expressed his frustration with the imperialism and economic focus of the country, as the parody began: "Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the

Sword" and ended with:

In a sordid slime harmonious, Greed was born in yonder ditch; With a longing in his bosom--for other's goods an itch; Christ died to make men holy; let men die to make us rich; Our god is marching on. (136) 33

It is interesting to note how each side in the Civil War saw the nation's patriotic songs as its own, and to observe the ways the rivals appropriated tunes with some altering of the lyrics.

The Confederates expressed their nationalism in one version of "America" by singing "Our loved

Confederacy / May we a nation be." In fact, early in the war, some southern leaders thought that instead of creating its own flag and songs, the South should claim those of the United States.

Branham records in Sweet Freedom's Song, that in the case of "The Star-Spangled Banner," a reporter for the Richmond Examiner wrote that it is "Southern in its origin, in sentiments, poetry, and song; in its association with chivalrous deeds, it is ours." However, others wanted the symbols of the Confederacy to support a new national identity, and desired "music composed by her own children." Many songs of this period crossed the Mason-Dixon line, especially those that were popular before the war (129).

"Dixie" - lyrics by Dan Emmett

A similar irony surrounds the evolution of the song "Dixie". It premiered in the North, as

"Dixie's Land," in a New York minstrel show in 1859. The word 'Dixie' referred to the white

North's nickname for blacks, which eventually was used to signify the entire South. The song took the south by storm after a production in New Orleans. By 1861, the same year that produced the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Dixie" took its place as the Confederate battle hymn and national anthem. Yet, exposing the ironies of the period and the blurred allegiances, it was composed by an African-American and made popular by Dan Emmett, the son of an Ohio abolitionist. This song, with northern origins, was played at the inauguration of Confederate

President Jefferson Davis. One of the only national hymns with no reference to the divine,

"Dixie" embodies the myth of the South, the sentimental longing for home. The tune is a dance 34 with a minstrel show rhythm called a "walkabout." The lyrics present "Dixie" as a place where one can speak the language as one pleases, expressing a love for the South. Here are the original sheet music lyrics:

I wish I was in de land ob cotton, Old times dar am not forgotten, Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land. In Dixie Land whar I was born in, Early on one frosty mornin, Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land. Dan I wish I was in Dixie, Hooray! Hooray! In Dixie Land, I'll take my stand, To lib and die in Dixie. Away, Away, Away down south in Dixie. Away, Away, Away down south in Dixie. (Crawford 264-265)

"Dixie" was popular in the North as well, reported to be a favorite of Union troops and President

Lincoln. The Union army changed the lyrics to reflect their view of the South as traitors: "And men with rebel shouts and thunder / Tear our good old flag asunder / Far away, far away, far away, Dixie Land" (Branham 129). This favorite national song of the Confederacy had its roots in the Union.

"Dixie" also served as the basis of a northern song whose lyrics came from a unexpected source--a meek woman of the church. Fanny Crosby was one of the most prolific of Protestant hymn-writers, and an ancestor of crooner Bing Crosby. Fanny was blind since early childhood,

Edith L. Blumhofer writes in her biography of Crosby, and was associated with the Perkins

Institute for the Blind, whose benefactor was Samuel Gridley Howe (42-43). Crosby's production of thousands of poems and hymn lyrics has made her famous among champions of women, the disabled, and the Protestant church. Blumhofer reports that in the 1850s, Fanny, a northerner, had a youthful enthusiasm for Jacksonian politics, but over time she began to 35 support the antislavery Whigs, and became an ardent supporter of Lincoln. Crosby and her song lyrics perfectly represented her beliefs in the new Republican Party--temperance, public schools, and a wholehearted aversion to slavery, during a time when Catholics were pitted against

Protestants and the nation was struggling with immigration (94). Up until the war, Crosby's lyrics brimmed with pride in her republic, but this changed--during the war they contained a militaristic vengeance toward the South: "Death to those whose impious hands / Burst our

Union's sacred bands / Vengeance thunders, right demands-- / Justice for the brave." She dared the South to come north in her "Song to Jeff Davis:"

Now, Jeff, when thou art ready Lead on thy rebel crew, We'll give them all a welcome-- With balls and powder too! We spurn thy constitution! We spurn thy southern laws! Our stars and stripes are waving, And Heav'n will speed our cause. (Blumhofer 95)

In Crosby's northern Whig view, God is clearly on the side of the Union, and she appropriated "Dixie" into a song she called "Dixie for the Union" which was sung in public schools, urging the North to retake the South: "Go meet those Southern traitors / With iron will /

And should your courage falter, Boys, / Remember Bunker Hill ---Hurrah!" (Blumhofer 96).

While Crosby was a diminutive blind woman, her lyrics portray the stalwart resolve of a soldier on a mission.

Along with weapons and supplies, soldiers captured songs like plunder during the war.

Confederate troops revised the "Star-Spangled Banner" in this version: "And the flag of secession in triumph doth wave / O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave" (Branham

130). Sometimes when the encampments were close in proximity, a pause in the fighting gave way to impromptu singing and band music, audible from both sides, and sometimes in unison, as 36 soldiers indulged in sentimental remembrances of life before the war. These moments of music uniting where politics had failed were momentary, however, and in the morning light the lines of battle were drawn once again. As Confederate Lieutenant L. D. Young of Kentucky describes the beauty of the Union band playing "Hail Columbia," "America," and "The Star-Spangled

Banner": "It haunted me for days, but never shook my loyalty to the Stars and Bars or relaxed my efforts in behalf of our cause" (Branham 131). It seems music did have the power to unite, at least for a time, but the certainty of each side won out over the sentimental songs of the soldiers' innocent youth.

"Word over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage Must in time be utterly lost. That the hands of the sisters Death and Night Incessantly, softly, wash again and ever again This soiled world…" --Walt Whitman, "Reconciliation"

During the 1880s the memory of the Civil War was both close enough and distant enough to fuel a desire for sentimental memorializing. The focus of these reminiscences shifted away from emancipation and the triumph of the North to an emphasis on the sacrifices of the soldiers on both sides. This also led to the ascendancy of a newly kindled fervent civil religion as both sections forged their ways to reconciliation. Musically, "John Brown's Body" fell out of fashion, and in a mutual effort to acknowledge both sides, civic observances usually included the "Battle

Hymn" paired with "Dixie" (Stauffer 117). As time went on, those closely connected to the war passed away, and the hands of the sisters, Death and Night, in their incessant and soft manner, washed the soiled world.

The washing away of the pain expressed itself in an explosion of musical output which included nationalistic songs. This was due to a combination of factors: the popularity of singing 37 societies, piano production, and the ready availability of sheet music through publishing firms.

People gathered around the piano to sing "parlor songs" and in a blending of romance and ramparts, families and friends sang the songs of Stephen Foster such as "Jeannie with the Light

Brown Hair," along with the "Star-Spangled Banner" (Crawford 245). The tremendous surge of nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century was publicly expressed through a network of societies founded to celebrate patriotism. Richard Crawford, in America's Musical Life, states that through much of the 1800s the post office was the only national institution that touched the lives of citizens directly. Journalism was local, not the national media we are accustomed to today. However, in the 1890s, heritage associations such as the Sons of the American

Revolution and the Daughters of the American Revolution were founded, and they began projects to refurbish nationalistic places such as Mount Vernon and Independence Hall. The

Pledge of Allegiance was created, and Flag Day was established. By the end of the decade, the flag appeared along with a copy of the Declaration of Independence in 35,000 schoolrooms, where the Pledge was recited daily. It was during this period that citizens began campaigns to call for a national anthem. Crawford attributes this outpouring of patriotism (mostly among the native-born white middle class) to three possible causes in the 1890s: immigration, industrial unrest, and war overseas (530). These changes, with people of color speaking different languages and the emerging of differing political beliefs, brought out the patriotism in the established social order, sometimes even flowing from the will to exclude and preserve rather than to be adaptable and inclusive.

David W. Blight explores these undercurrents in Race and Reunion - The Civil War in

American Memory, as he describes the semi-centennial reunion at Gettysburg in 1913. He paints a picture of reconciliatory celebration: slavery and secession were no longer discussed, soldiers 38 were celebrated not as members of the Confederacy or the Union, but as Americans. Blight states that the disparate visions of the Civil War presented at the Gettysburg reunion masked just as much as they revealed (389). Segregation, white supremacy, and lynching, all realities in the post-war society required a segregated historical memory. He writes:

Racial legacies, conflict itself, the bitter consequences of Reconstruction's failure to make

good on the promises of liberty and equality had been seared clean from the nation's

master narrative. But that clean narrative of a Civil War between two foes struggling

nobly for equally honorable notions of liberty, of a sentimentalized plantation South to

which Americans of the hectic industrial age could escape, of soldiers' devotion in epic

proportion to causes that mattered not, could not rest uncontested forever across

American culture. (391)

Gettysburg Reunion, 1913

It is understandable that aging gentlemen soldiers who were once at war with each other would, in the spirit of reconciliation, stand side by side and sing "The Battle Hymn" and "Dixie" in the same ceremony. Yet it is just as easy to comprehend that there were sentiments that were unspoken and unsung, and we can understand why songs which presented America as the pure and spotless New Israel would rub against the grain of the consciences of those who felt the 39 undercurrents--the realities of a segregated and imperfect society. The citizenry at the beginning of the new century welcomed new anthems that celebrated peace and progress and the magnificent beauty of the land.

"America the Beautiful" - lyrics by Katharine Lee Bates, 1893

Journalist Lynn Sherr examines the history of a hymn she calls our "national heartbeat set to music" in her book America the Beautiful - The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation's

Favorite Song. Sherr's book is not only an examination of the song, but a tribute to the author of the lyrics, Katharine Lee Bates, who became a professor of English at Wellesley in the last decade of the 1800s. Bates' highly-educated family lived in Boston, and her father was a

Congregationalist minister. She became one of the members of the second class at the pioneering Wellesley female college (16). "Katie from the class of '80" would spend her forty- year teaching career at her alma mater, but it was a trip out west in 1893 to take a summer position in Colorado that inspired the words of the poem that made her famous and gave

America one of its most beloved hymns. For the first stop on her trip, she saw Niagara Falls, the wonder that was just being considered as a source of hydro-electric power. From there she journeyed to the World's Fair in Chicago, where 10,000 voices opened the event by singing

"America" (Sherr 27). As she traveled, she kept a diary, noting the beauty of her country across the miles. From Chicago, she boarded a train on Independence Day which took her across the

Kansas wheat fields. Sherr reports that her diary reveals a patriotic American who, when viewing the exhilarating countryside, coupled with the marvels of the recently-seen World's Fair, expressed an unabashed love of country and an optimism for the future (29). On Wednesday,

July 5, Bates came to Colorado Springs where she was engaged for a three-week teaching session. The president of Colorado College had imported some of the best progressive minds of 40 the East: the president of Brown University, who would lecture on the Silver Question; a

Harvard Shakespearean scholar; an Amherst astronomer; and Katherine, who taught courses on

Chaucer and Latin passion plays (30). It was the sight-seeing experiences, however, that filled her diary with entries where she was left searching for adjectives to describe the things she saw.

This culminated in a moment she called "the supreme day of our Colorado sojourn" in a wagon excursion to the top of Pike's Peak (Sherr 32). The panoramic view from the summit allowed her to see the heartlands to the east and the regal mountains to the west. That night in her hotel, she wrote in her diary: "most glorious scenery I ever beheld." Then, she opened her notebook, and jotted down the verses which became the poem of the song. Sherr records Bates's recollection of the moment: "It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind" (34).

The first verse of the first version, published in 1895:

O beautiful for halcyon skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the enameled plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee Till souls wax fair as earth and air And music-hearted sea!

Bates revised the poem several times, and the 1911 version is the one we sing today: O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

41

O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine Till all success be nobleness And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

At the time Bates wrote the poem, she called it "America" (Sherr 57). Meanwhile, a musician and hymn-writer from Newark named Samuel Augustus Ward was composing tunes for congregational singing. As had been done for centuries, poems in certain common meters were set to various tunes, so texts were often sung to differing melodies. Ward adapted the poem

"O Mother, Dear Jerusalem" into a tune he called "Materna," which he said had a simple nobility

(Sherr 52). This tune became popular in the churches at that time, and as Bates' poem was published the year after she wrote it, in a Boston church journal called The Congregationalist, it was immediately noticed and reached an audience far outside Boston. People began setting it to music, and a clergyman in Rochester found Bates' poem and matched it to "Materna." In the same way that "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)" spread through the public school system, 42

Sherr reports that the Rochester grammar schools began to use Bates' poem set to "Materna" for commencement exercises, and it spread from one community to the next (57-59). Katharine

Lee Bates continued to modify and polish her poem, changing some words to make it easier to sing, such as switching "halcyon" to "spacious." Peter Gardella points out that the "alabaster cities" of the fourth verse refer to the city where God lives with mankind from the book of

Revelation, where God shall wipe away all tears, and there will be no more death or sorrow.

This place "undimmed by human tears" was inspired by the "White City" of the Chicago World's

Fair, where the model buildings really were made of alabaster, mined in Michigan (221).

Bates produced the final version of her masterpiece in 1911 and gave it the name

"America the Beautiful." Sherr notes that the popular poem was increasingly sung across the nation as war approached in Europe, and sometimes the words were fit to other tunes, such as

"Auld Lang Syne" (61). In fact, at one point, Bates counted seventy-four tunes that had been submitted to her to use as the music for the poem. As Sherr researched the song, she located thirty-six versions of these tunes and took them to her friend, composer Marvin Hamlisch, to have him play and evaluate the music. Each one paled in comparison to "Materna," and

Hamlisch noted that Samuel Ward's piece won out because he was a choirmaster who knew how to write for singers, and his melody touched the heart. Sherr gives Hamlisch's evaluation:

He said the piece was "very American--very direct, straightforward." And he pointed out

the musical secret in the refrain. At "plain," the note we're on is tenuous and we feel

unsettled, so the music takes us down to the keynote for the first syllable of "America!"

That resolves the musical unease. Then Ward transports us on that great sweep up the

scale so we can belt out the rest of the refrain. Or as Hamlisch put it, "he goes up and

goes somewhere and gets your heart. No question, Sam Ward definitely did it best." (62) 43

Hamlisch goes on to say, "it's simple and sweet…it's that climb up, that jump to 'America!' that gives you that feeling of reaching something big. If this song were not about America, that's where you'd say 'I love you!'" (Sherr 56-59). As familiar as "America the Beautiful" is today, hymn-writer Samuel Ward died of a skin disease in 1903 without knowing that his music would become the preferred tune for Bates' poem and that he would have a permanent place in the national hymnbook.

The hymn's focus on the beauty of the country and its lack of militaristic imagery led many to campaign for "America the Beautiful" to replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem. Novelist Albert Payson Terhune gave his reasons for the change in a letter to

Bates in which he did not mince words regarding his preference for "America the Beautiful" over

"The Star-Spangled Banner": "It IS America; not a petty naval action in a half-forgotten petty war, fitted to the semi-unsingable air of a ponderous old English booze-song" (Sherr 87).

Katharine Lee Bates wrote "America the Beautiful" as a prayer of thankfulness for the beauty of nature and an acknowledgement of God's grace. Ironically, Bates was not a member of any church--and when pressured to sign a statement at Wellesley promising to adhere to

Christian doctrine, she refused, almost to the point of losing her professorship. The trustees wisely backed down. Bates saw the invocation of God's grace as an ecumenical inclusive appeal, as "spacious as the skies," Sherr says. The community which shares the "good" Bates calls

"brotherhood", an idea of working together in mutual respect. Sherr notes that the song is often sung at Wellesley and modified for that community by substituting the word "sisterhood," but the alumnae recognize that Bates' word choice reflected her century and an ideal she fully supported (76). Her lyrics manage to invoke the Divine and also transcend sectarianism, desirable elements in a nationalistic hymn. 44

In 2014, a commercial advertisement during the Super Bowl featuring "America the

Beautiful" sparked international controversy. Coca-Cola presented an ad during which the song was sung by eight different people groups, in their various languages. People who were outraged expressed comments on social networking sites, complaining that the song should only be sung in English. Other views supporting the ad pointed out that one of the languages was Pueblo, an indigenous tongue, and nothing could be more American. The irony of ugly vitriol over many ethnic groups singing of the beauty of America no doubt pleased Coca-Cola and contributed to the selling of soft drinks, as the controversy took on a life of its own and the video of the commercial attained "viral" status (Ciafone 1). Yet those who were outraged would be surprised to know that Bates had no problem with the poem being translated into other languages or even applied to other countries. "I didn't have Australia in mind when I wrote it, but if they can use it and like it, that is all right" (Sherr 63). The furor over the Coca-Cola commercial highlights the extreme possessiveness many people feel about their patriotic songs and their desire to protect the way the songs are presented.

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Causes and Crusades

The sentimental ode to the beauty of the landscape in "America the Beautiful" could not mask the social realities of poverty and unemployment in early twentieth century America. A

1915 federal report stated that almost half of the population lived at starvation level, and the wealthiest two percent of Americans held sixty percent of the nation's assets (Stauffer 176).

Most labor leaders saw capitalism as a failure, and an uneasy dissatisfaction emerged among the poor and the working class. Organizers of the labor movement used songs to express unity and evoke radicalism in their grassroots meetings, and they chose hymn tunes that were well-known, adapting them with lyrics supporting their causes. From this time of labor strikes and marches,

Ralph Chaplin, an artist associated with the International Workers of the World, wrote a song he called "Solidarity Forever," which was sung to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." It became the anthem of the labor movement, and the first stanza highlighted the IWW motto:

"one big Union."

When the Union's inspiration through the worker's blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun, Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? But the Union makes us strong.

Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, For the Union makes us strong.

Stauffer writes that the song became a sensation, and was a favorite on picket lines. The solidarity of the workers had a religious fervor, and the millennial images in the original verses of Howe's poem, re-crafted by Chaplin, now represented social and economic transformation

(180-181). However, the onset of World War I and the Wilson administration's passage of the

Espionage Act suppressed the influence of the IWW, prohibited strikes, and succeeded in 46 crushing the movement amid the hysteria of patriotism surrounding the war effort. Stauffer writes that in later years, "Solidarity Forever" was dusted off, given a lyrics update, and was adopted by the United Automobile Workers as its anthem (196). At a dinner for the UAW in

1957, Marian Anderson sang the first verse of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and then transitioned to "Solidarity Forever", seaming together in song the labor and civil rights movements (Stauffer 240).

The renewed sense of nationalism in the late 1900s and the biblical images in patriotic songs led to their use in all sorts of public gatherings: holiday observances, political gatherings, sporting events, and church meetings. Evangelist and former baseball player Billy Sunday used the "Battle Hymn" in his revival meetings in the early twentieth century. During his preaching career, he managed to bridge the urban and the rural, the old beliefs with modern forms, and the idea of personal conversion in an age when people felt their souls lost in the industrial age.

Sunday was popular due to his athleticism, his stance on temperance, and his call to men to be spiritual leaders in their families. Sunday's use of the "Battle Hymn" perfectly expressed this merging of the old with the new as its imagery left behind the association with abolitionism and became applied to the challenges of the future (Stauffer 222). In 1934, sixteen-year-old Billy

Graham attended one of Sunday's meetings. Graham, adviser to eleven presidents from Truman to George W. Bush, grew to become the most famous preacher of his time. The "Battle Hymn" became his theme song in the 1940s and 1950s as he saw the world in an apocalyptic battle between two camps--Christian and Communist (Stauffer 229). One of the highlights of

Graham's long career occurred after the Cold War in Moscow in 1992, as he held a crusade in the

Olympic stadium before seventy-thousand people. Stauffer writes that the Russian Army

Chorus, formerly the Red Army Chorus, sang the hymn as a surprise, dedicating it to Graham. It 47 was one of his proudest moments and the footage of the event is enshrined as one of the most popular exhibits in the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte (231).

"God Bless America" - Irving Berlin "This Land Is Your Land" - Woody Guthrie

The threat of communism and Dust Bowl depression influenced the development of two new patriotic hymns, alike in their musical form, but wholly different in their messages about

America. "This Land Is Your Land" and "God Bless America" are two of the most recently written songs in the patriotic hymnal, each visionary, and with the themes we have seen in the other anthems of war and peace, pride and humility. Yet these songs also represent the troubling times in which they were written, with the introductory verse of "God Bless America" alluding to the war in Europe and the lyrics of "This Land Is Your Land" referring to the breadlines of the 1930s (Shaw 6). "God Bless America" was introduced in late 1938, and "This

Land Is Your Land," by Woody Guthrie, appeared in 1940.

Irving Berlin and Woody Guthrie, although they approached music from widely differing perspectives, shared a rare accomplishment--they both contributed a song to the country's small collection of national anthems. John Shaw examines the contrasts and the parallels in their lives and the songs in This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two

American Anthems. Both Berlin and Guthrie experienced homelessness; Berlin, born Israel

Baline in 1888, immigrated with his large family from Russia to Ellis Island after his home was burned in the Russian pogroms, during a time when two million Jews left Russia (10). Woodrow

Wilson Guthrie, born in Oklahoma in 1912, would also experience a house fire as a young boy, and his family never recovered financially or emotionally from the effects of the Great 48

Depression and the Dust Bowl (60). There were other parallels between the two, Shaw writes-- both married outside their faith: Guthrie married a Jew, and Berlin married a Christian; both families lost a young child, which brought reconciliation to families alienated by the faith differences; and both wrote songs for their wives' religious holidays--Guthrie produced a

Channukah song, and Berlin wrote "Easter Parade" and "White Christmas" (4). In most ways, however, the two were vastly different.

Berlin worked his way up in the music business in New York City, becoming wildly successful with songs such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band," which ultimately led to his writing hit after hit for movies during Hollywood's Golden Age. Berlin was the most significant contributor to a transformation in American music which incorporated syncopated rhythms from black culture, made popular in ragtime, and magnified by Tin Pan Alley songwriters and publishers. These liberating, rhythmic songs led the way to the dance craze in New York that quickly swept the nation (Crawford 546). Berlin, self-trained, often wrote the words and the music and published the songs himself, establishing one of the most successful careers in

American music. 49

- album cover, Kate Smith

"God Bless America" was premiered by singer Kate Smith on the eve of Armistice Day,

November 10, 1938, during her popular nationwide broadcast. As she introduced it, she spoke of the composer and the hymn of praise and love that Berlin had written in thanksgiving to the country that had given him a wonderful life. Pronouncing it the "greatest song Irving Berlin has ever composed," she sang it, as he wished, as a ballad. However, the song became even more popular once Smith sang it the way she preferred, as a march. She recorded it in 1939, within weeks of the Marion Anderson concert at the Lincoln Memorial (Shaw 133-134). During the next year, love of the song was so widespread that some began an official campaign to change the national anthem to "God Bless America." Because of anti-German sentiment, the Hay Fever

Sufferers' Society of America even suggested replacing the response to a sneeze, "Gesundheit," with "God Bless America!" (Shaw 151).

Most explanations for the phenomenal popularity of Berlin's song point out that the song is short and easy to sing, essentially expressing a simple prayer to God for the country. Shaw 50 points out that most of America's anthems invoke the Divine, with the exceptions of "Yankee

Doodle" and "Dixie." "Chester" boasts that God is on the side of the Patriots; "America the

Beautiful" asks God to work in the future to mend flaws and shed grace; and the "Star-Spangled

Banner" gives thanks for the preserved nation. "God Bless America" accomplishes this in a dramatic way: the song's musical and emotional climax comes on the common name for the

Divine, pleading with urgency and yet humility, in the spirit of Lincoln's Second Inaugural

Address--an acknowledgement that we cannot know God's purposes and yet we must align ourselves with them to the best of our abilities (Shaw 131). Here are the lyrics with the less- often performed introductory section:

While the storm clouds gather Far across the sea Let us swear allegiance To a land that's free. Let us all be grateful For a land so fair [original 1938 lyric-- 'that we're far from there' (Gardella 248)] As we raise our voices In a solemn prayer.

God bless America Land that I love Stand beside Her, and guide Her Through the night with the light from above From the mountains, to the prairies, To the ocean white with foam, God bless America, my home, sweet, home.

Kate Smith's recording, march-like, omitted the introduction, and became the standard. This patriotic hymn, considered by many to be superior to the official national anthem, soon became a part of the fabric of American society.

Woody Guthrie hated the song "God Bless America." Guthrie had spent a difficult childhood in poverty, sometimes staying in hobo camps, navigating the difficult years of the 51

Depression and the Dust Bowl. In 1940, "God Bless America" was being sung everywhere, and

Guthrie thought the "home, sweet, home" was cliché and glossed over social inequality. As

Guthrie hitchhiked across the country eventually arriving in New York City, his observances came not from the heights of purple mountain majesties, but from the dusty roads of the plains where he saw a different view of America. Every time he stopped at a diner he said he heard

Berlin's song on the radio. Guthrie loved America but he wanted to take the nation back for the people--"you and me" (Gardella 252). His response was a six-stanza song that he wrote as a satire to Berlin's song, originally titled "God Blessed America for Me." The first version included direct challenges to the song Guthrie despised:

Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me A sign was painted said Private Property. But on the back side, it didn't say nothing-- God Blessed America for me.

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple By the relief office I saw my people-- As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if God Blessed America for me. (Crawford 614-615)

Guthrie had become friends with actor Will Geer, who asked him to join his act, consisting of songs and skits performed in venues as varied as farm picket lines to left-wing

Hollywood fundraisers. Geer introduced Guthrie to John Steinbeck and the two became kindred spirits in their careers of documenting the lives of the downtrodden through their art. Stauffer writes that as Steinbeck was working on The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, his wife suggested for the title the biblical picture from Revelation and Isaiah that Julia Ward Howe used in the "Battle

Hymn." Steinbeck thought it was the perfect image for his novel which exposed the cost of the failure of the American promise. Steinbeck also saw the practical benefit of the reference to the

"Battle Hymn" to counter those who tried to smear him for linking America's challenges to 52 communism. He said that his book's truths were tied to one of the great hymns of the world, and he told his agent: "People know the Battle Hymn who don't know the Star Spangled Banner"

(Stauffer 174). In the same way, Woody Guthrie had to navigate his career through a time when his sympathy with socialist causes conflicted with the music establishment in which Irving

Berlin thrived.

According to Adelaida Reyes in her book Music in America, "God Bless America" and

"This Land is Your Land" are very similar in form: they are written in the diatonic system that characterized Western music in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (they go up and down the scale note by note without great leaps); the meter is straightforward and march-like; both songs have a four-line strophic form; and the English text fits the tune syllabically, that is, one word or syllable per note. In all these musical elements, the songs are made from the same mold (42).

However, the America represented by the songs paint completely different pictures.

- singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie 53

In the 1930s, the political left in the United States was gaining momentum with the support of immigrants, intellectuals, and artists. Folk music became a means to rally support at political gatherings, and this was fueled through President Franklin Roosevelt's WPA projects which aimed to preserve American Folk Song culture. Alan Lomax became influential in what came to be known as the folk revival, and he "discovered" folk singer and songwriter Woody

Guthrie. He arranged a landmark event billed as a "Grapes of Wrath Evening" which featured

Guthrie among many others in the folk music world, and Guthrie made the strongest impression.

Lomax described him this way: "…Woody Guthrie was quite obviously a genius. His songs had the beautiful, easy-to-remember simplicity of the best of folk art…" (Crawford 613-614). After the Grapes of Wrath concert, Guthrie began to work with Lomax and record music in

Washington for the Archive of American Folk Song. During this time, he met and began to mentor Pete Seeger, a Harvard dropout who dedicated himself to making a difference in politics through folk music (Crawford 615). Seeger was part of the folk movement in the 1950s, an offshoot of the political left. Robert Santelli, in his book This Land Is Your Land, reports that

Seeger was a primary target for the House Un-American Activities Committee. His evasive answers frustrated his questioners, and kept him out of jail, despite his association with those sympathetic to socialism, including Guthrie (186). Santelli states that in subsequent years folk music gained credibility by moving into the mainstream. In 1958, a clean-cut group arrived called The Kingston Trio, whose albums included Guthrie songs. Their popularity paved the way for other groups such as The New Christy Minstrels, The Brothers Four, and Peter, Paul and

Mary, leading to the folk music craze of the 1960s. Peter, Paul and Mary would sing "This Land

Is Your Land" at the end of their concerts, and everyone in the audience knew it and sang 54 along (Santelli 205). Folk music was the pop music of the 1960s, and it played an important role in linking social and political causes.

The popularity of "This Land Is Your Land" was due not only to the folk song movement but also to its being used in the schools, which we have already seen influenced the spread of the anthems "America" and "America the Beautiful." The simple melody (which some say comes from "You Are My Sunshine") and its limited vocal range make it easy to sing. The absence of a reference to God, its patriotism, and the peaceful progressive message of the traditional verses make it a favorite among teachers. Guthrie's son Arlo tells a poignant story of being in grammar school in 1955 and discovering that all the other children knew his father's song, but he did not.

By this time, Woody Guthrie was spending much of his time in the hospital battling the neuromuscular disease that would eventually take his life, but during a time at home he took

Arlo outside, and barely able to play his guitar, taught him the song, including the protest verses.

Arlo later said that Woody wanted to make sure Arlo knew the original verses, so that no one would forget them (Gardella 254).

Pete Seeger closed his concerts with "This Land Is Your Land." Seeger said he would start two words of the tune and everyone would join in, singing multiple verses by heart, having been taught the song in school. Sometimes Seeger sang the original protest verses. The irony here was that masses of people embraced a tune they thought of as a "feel-good" song unaware that it was written to denounce America's treatment of the downtrodden (Santelli 219-220). The well-known song, as was done with other national anthems, became material for parodies.

55

Santelli writes:

'"This Land Is Your Land" soon became an anti-pollution song ("the sun was shining, but

the hazes hid it…"), a pro-American Indian song ("This Land is your land, but it once

was my land…"), a pro-education song ("These schools are your schools, these schools

are my schools…"), an anti-logging and mining song ("We've logged the forests, we've

mined the mountains…") and so forth. ... One couldn't help but think that Woody Guthrie

was somewhere smiling at the ruckus his most famous song was making.' (222)

The most famous parody of the song came during the 2004 presidential campaign when the website JibJab featured a video with animated versions of George W. Bush and John Kerry each singing "This land will surely vote for me." In twenty-four hours, millions viewed it on all continents including Antarctica, and even on the International Space Station (Gardella 254).

Here is the version that is sung today:

This land is your land, This land is my land, From California to the New York island; From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway, I saw above me that endless skyway: I saw below me that golden valley: This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts; And all around me a voice was sounding: This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling, And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting: This land was made for you and me.

56

As I went walking, I saw a sign there, And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing, That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that freedom highway; Nobody living can ever make me turn back, This land was made for you and me.

Shaw points out the irony in the desperate people standing in the shadow of the steeple--

Guthrie's swipe at the limitations of the powers of the church. However, the song evidences the

Divine: a voice is sounding, and chanting, in the diamond desert and the wheat fields, and it is the same voice that is invoked in "America" to break the silence of the stones and ring from the mountainsides (154). It represents a powerful pride in the singer's relationship with nature and the land.

"We Shall Overcome" - Traditional

We shall overcome, we shall overcome We shall overcome someday O, deep in my heart I do believe We shall overcome someday.

In 1945, African-American tobacco workers in South Carolina who were being paid forty-five cents an hour went on strike against the American Tobacco Company. They began singing a gospel song they knew from church, "We will see the Lord someday," changing the words to "We will win our rights someday." The song made its way to the Highlander Folk 57

School in Tennessee, a place that trained social-justice activists and labor organizers. In 1947

Highlander music director Zilphia Horton taught the song to Pete Seeger, who changed the rhythm, added some verses, and substituted "shall" for "will" in the title. Seeger explained he wasn't trying to overlay the song with his Harvard education, but that the vowel in the word

"shall" simply opened the mouth wider and was easier to sing (Stowe 261-262). The song quickly became the favorite anthem of social justice causes. Labor activism began to shift to civil rights issues, and populations of the Southern black churches, white folklorists, black student activists, and white and black workers made up an interracial movement, mostly peaceful, that embraced "We Shall Overcome" as the archetypal freedom song (Stauffer 244-

245). Politics and music combined fully in the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee, and on freedom rides and during sit-ins, the groups sang "We Shall Overcome." Popular music artists who had roots in gospel such as Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Marvin

Gaye spread the movement to large audiences. The mix of black artists with the white folk performers bridged the labor and social activist movements to the civil rights movement, and

Pete Seeger was now the most influential folk artist of the twentieth century, as the movements became integrated (Dreier). Stauffer even reports that President Lyndon Johnson quoted the song as he affirmed his commitment to a Voting Rights Bill (245). This adopting of the song by some in the white community was not embraced by all in the black community; militant black groups including the Black Panthers and leaders such as Malcolm X defied two nationalistic hymns as they parodied the "Battle Hymn" in this way:

You conspire to keep us silent in the field and in the slum You promise us the vote and sing us "We Shall Overcome," But John Brown knew what freedom was and died to win us some That's why we keep marching on. 58

For the militant black groups, the strategy of non-violence did not work. They believed "We

Shall Overcome" should be abandoned. They shared their strong convictions with the civil rights movement's champion of non-violence, Martin Luther King, Jr. King continued to use "We

Shall Overcome" in marches and demonstrations, but his events began to use "The Battle Hymn" as well (Stauffer 247-248).

August 28, 1963 marked a moment that changed the nation. When the Reverend Doctor

Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial before 250,000 people, his words were harsh. Although his "I Have a Dream" speech has been remembered in a fond and sentimental fashion, he began by pointing out how little progress had been made in the hundred years since Emancipation. He spoke of a lack of freedom, of a country that had written the

Negro people a "bad check." To the crowd that was twenty-five percent white, he warned that there would not be satisfaction or tranquility until justice emerged. His dream challenged the most basic sacred text of American civil religion: that all men are created equal. The man who was the soul of the civil rights movement was experiencing the defining moment of his career, and he began to improvise by using the lyrics of "America." He spoke of a day in the future when people could sing with new meaning "My Country, 'tis of thee," stating: "If America is to become a great nation this must become true." For King, the "sweet land of liberty" was far from being attained for all Americans. "America," was seen by Dr. King as a hymn of belonging as well as exclusion (Gardella 302-305). The crowds sang the protest songbook that day, led by several white musicians, among them Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. They led the masses in "We Shall Overcome" and "This Land is Your Land." Woody Guthrie, suffering from Huntington's disease, listened on the radio to Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech that day (Santelli 209). 59

The "Battle Hymn" was popular with King as well, Stauffer writes, because of the prophetic and millennial themes. He used it to express the country's providential identity and yet to rebuke it for falling short (249). A few years later, King finished another famous speech in

Memphis by assuring the crowd that America would get to the Promised Land. He said: "…I'm so happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!" Twelve hours later he was shot outside his motel room, his last public statement a euphoric quotation from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

(Gardella 315).

Just as folk music became associated with the political left, country music, with its roots in gospel and Protestant values, identified with the political right. Katharine Meizel, in her article "A Singing Citizenry: Popular Music and Civil Religion in America" looks at the songs

"God Bless America" and the song she calls its 'godchild,' "God Bless the U.S.A." by Lee

Greenwood. She says both songs are similar, and are indebted to "America the Beautiful" as their message is a call for a divine benediction over the landscape (499). In the wake of the

September 11 attacks, stunned members of Congress famously sang "God Bless America" on the steps of the Capitol. Afterwards, both songs were regularly sung at Fourth of July celebrations, presidential campaign conventions, and at ballparks in addition to the national anthem. These unofficial anthems are necessary, in Meizel's opinion, in the same way "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 and "In God We Trust" replaced "E Pluribus, Unum" as the national motto in 1956. The fear of communism, coinciding with the birth of popular music, required some distinguishing characteristic of American music--we were a nation under God, because the communists were not. By the time "God Bless the U.S.A." came along, however, 60 there was a partisan (Republican) distinction, and Greenwood's song was especially prevalent during the presidency of George W. Bush and the Iraq War (500).

Gardella points out that "This Land Is Your Land" is versatile enough to sound conservative if sung by the white, male Republicans who sang it in 1960 when they nominated

Richard Nixon, and it can also sound liberal if sung by the Democrats who sang it in the early hours of the morning after George McGovern's speech accepting his party's nomination in 1972

(255). Sometimes our patriotic songs highlight differences in political thought; "The Battle

Hymn of the Republic" became polarizing during the election of Barack Obama in 2008; his success vindicated the ideals of the black church, and was sung in black communities as a celebration of hope that a political millennium had been achieved. At the same time, the song was sung at Tea Party rallies as an encouragement that the traditional order would still stand

(Stauffer 291). Stauffer recounts a law student's assessment of this polarization who proposed a

"divorce settlement" between the Left and the Right:

"Conservatives would keep guns, capitalism, Wal-Mart, Wall Street, Bibles, and Judeo-

Christian values…Liberals would keep the ACLU, abortion clinics, Oprah, and illegal

aliens. The Left would get "Kumbaya," while the Right would retain the "Battle Hymn

of the Republic." (292)

Of course, there is a great irony that the song that was meant to celebrate the effort to keep the

Union together would be part of a national divorce, but Stauffer writes that it only lays bare the tensions within the hymn-- peace and violent discord--that give it such strength (292). This point may be a clue to understanding the longevity and power of national hymns: the internal tension that gives us not only wrath, but also glory. 61

-directional sign for a music festival

"Amazing Grace" - lyrics by John Newton

Amazing Grace! (how sweet the sound) That sav'd a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears reliev'd; How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believ'd!

Thro' many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis'd good to me, His word my hope secures; He will my shield and portion be, As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease; I shall possess, within the veil, A life of joy and peace.

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The earth shall soon dissolve like snow The sun forbear to shine; But God, who call'd me here below Will be forever mine.

The author of the song that is possibly America's best-loved hymn, "Amazing Grace," was seaman John Newton, born in London in 1725. Involved in the African slave trade, in 1748 a savage storm hit his ship off Newfoundland. According to David Stowe, Newton had been reading Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ, and he found himself praying. In Newton's later accounts, the storm was the moment of his conversion (251). After leaving his career on the sea, he studied theology, joined the Anglican priesthood, and settled in a parish in Olney, a small market town of poor people. He wrote hymns to coordinate with the arguments in his sermons, and the day "Amazing Grace" was first sung at Olney, Newton was preaching from the Second

Book of Chronicles about King David's response to God's covenant. David marvels "Who am I,

O Lord God, that You have brought me so far?" "Amazing Grace" is a paraphrase of King

David's words, and Stowe writes, "While pointing to the individual's experience of saving grace, the broader context of the hymn is inescapably social: it is about a promise extended to a group, and fully realized only with the corporate body of Christ" (252). For the singer, "I" and "me" are autobiographical within the idea of salvation.

Stowe writes that the words of "Amazing Grace" were set to dozens of tunes throughout the nineteenth century (256). It spread through the camp meetings of the second Great

Awakening, was sung by many different denominations, and found its way into all kinds of church hymnals. It was pushed into the mainstream, just as "We Shall Overcome" was, by the civil rights movement. In 1947, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson recorded "Amazing Grace," with the tune we know today, and in 1968 Judy Collins used it in an encounter group, later recording 63 it as well. These events placed the song clearly in the context of black freedom and anti-Vietnam war sentiments in the middle part of the twentieth century. It was also used in Twelve-Step programs for Alcoholics Anonymous (Stowe 264-266).

In a popular documentary by journalist Bill Moyers, he reports that "Amazing Grace" is the most frequently sung hymn in the English language. Moyers interviewed singers from the worlds of opera, folk, gospel, and country music, including inmates who sang the song in their prison choir. Each interviewee speaks of the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness. Jessye

Norman sings it on an opera stage, "raising" the song in the manner she learned from her mother and grandmother in church; Judy Collins speaks of the "mystical territory" between her and the audience when she presents it in a concert. An inmate in the prison choir talks about his fears being relieved, and says the words are "a story for a generation if they'll just listen." Dr. Walter

Turnbull, director of the Boy's Choir of Harlem, speaks of the irony of a song which is so embraced by the black community, yet was written by a slave trader. Country star Johnny Cash tells of singing "Amazing Grace" while picking cotton as a young boy. As a song-writer, Cash says the words have "no guile" and a person could be "…in a dungeon but free as a breeze.

Some songs make a difference in your life and that song makes a difference" (Moyers).

The difference was profound in the hymn writer's life; John Newton, in his later years, helped fight for legislation against the slave trade. The man who at one time treated humans like cargo really thought he was wretched, and his song of grace is his great legacy. His tombstone says "…preserved to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy" (Moyers).

While "Amazing Grace" is rooted in Protestant Christianity, the first three verses, the most well-known, do not mention Christ or God. The song's focus on the celebration of the experience of grace can be sung by Jews, Muslims, Christians, or even people who do not 64 declare a particular faith. This transcendent inclusivity makes it a perfect choice for occasions during which Americans observe their civic faith, such as the memorial services at Ground Zero in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Diana Butler Bass, in her book Broken We Kneel, raises the conundrum of how we beseech the Divine in public without offending our fellow citizens. She says our particular faith is personal, but our public faith is one of generic piety. Although

"Amazing Grace" is Newton's testimony and a summary of evangelical Protestantism--trapped by sin, humans are blind, wretched, and dead--there is at the same time in the same lyrics the qualities of thankfulness, humility, and awe; a wonder at the divine love contrasted with human frailty that make the song universally appropriate for civic piety (Bass 51-52).

"Amazing Grace" and "God Bless America" are the same in that there are two characters in each--in "God Bless America" the two are God and the nation, but in "Amazing Grace," the two are God and the penitent sinner. "God Bless America" is a song of dwelling in the promised land; in "Amazing Grace," the individual is on a pilgrimage which does not end in perfection.

Bass states "something is wrong with the universe and supernatural forces are needed to fix it"

(52). In the same ways that "Amazing Grace" helped eighteenth century American Protestants in their search for mercy as they settled a new land, the song provided an outlet for baby boomers who were restlessly seeking meaning after World War II. Judy Collins' version gave voice to her generation in the 1960s: "I once was lost, but now am found." Bass states that for the baby boomers, "Amazing Grace" replaced "God Bless America" as the anthem of their political and spiritual experiences (53). Her theory involves what she calls the great irony in the American myth of divine exceptionalism which is perfectly set in "God Bless America." According to

Bass, in a nation where Christianity flourished, this myth has undermined the Christian message of salvation and redemption through God's love on the cross. Every nation needs redemption 65 and no one is holy apart from God's action. Much of America's public piety as expressed in patriotic song casts our nation as good, pure, and innocent--and our enemies as evil--and this leads us away from gospel humility to a national hubris. This may be the reason "Amazing

Grace" seems to strike the right note across a vast expanse of political and nationalistic experience; it expresses the faith of humble, contrite people dependent on a merciful God. In the aftermath of the terrorists attacks in 2001, the songs were often programmed together. Bass surmises that the combination of the zealous nationalism of "God Bless America" and the grieving hopefulness of "Amazing Grace," spoke to our anger and pain (55). While it may seem impossible for a single song to encapsulate the complex nuances needed to express nationalistic pride in an imperfect world, "Amazing Grace" has a place in the patriotic hymnal that seems to open automatically and somehow fit every situation with its message of forgiveness, hope, and confidence that grace will lead us home.

As the country gets more and more diverse, simple objects such as the flag and universally known patriotic songs with messages of national identity can unify massive groups of citizens in public gatherings. Still, these presentations of our national music evolve and reflect the times in which they are performed. Reyes expounds upon this idea with the example of Jimi

Hendrix's performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock in 1969. Hendrix used the national anthem to make a point: as he began the opening bars, there was no doubt of the song he was playing; yet as he began to alter the song, his message to the audience was clear: the country was about to change. As he varied the melody, embellishing the song with wailing and groaning sound effects, he made the statement that there were divergent opinions concerning the sort of country that America was becoming. During the soul-searching 1960s, Hendrix's version 66 of the national anthem pointed toward the future. One musician called it Martin Luther King's "I

Have a Dream" speech on guitar (Reyes 57-68).

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Conclusion

Since humans are commonly assumed to have a natural aversion to change, traditional performances of national hymns may be the most comfortable way for citizens to experience communal song. Yet such caution may inhibit the creation or enjoyment of new works which reflect the globalization and diversity of our nation in the twenty-first century. An anthem which seems to lack the tradition of past songs could be on the horizon which sacrifices conventionality for innovation, and points toward a new millennium's vision of America.

Hannah Arendt describes both the advantages and disadvantages of letting go of some traditions in Between Past and Future:

With the loss of tradition we have lost the thread which safely guided us through the vast

realms of the past, but this thread was also the chain fettering each successive generation

to a predetermined aspect of the past. It could be that only now will the past open up to

us with unexpected freshness and tell us things that no one as yet had ears to hear. (94)

Our ears may be ready for fresh patriotic hymns. If one were to face the task of composing an enduring nationalistic song for present-day America, which musical, lyrical, and philosophical elements would it require? From our exploration of the American Patriotic Hymnal, here is a list of characteristics from the current songbook which would lead to a successful composition:

 It would be easy to sing, with a narrow range, but with enough leaps to highlight key

words, like "free" and "America."

 It may be based on a familiar hymn or folk song that people already know.

 It should refer to the landscape and the magnificence of mountains as well as plains. 68

 The song must be non-sectarian, so that people of all faiths can relate to it, and yet it

would have a focus on the Divine.

 It should be visionary in philosophy; the lyrics must present a path to a better place.

 It would be embraced by the public school system and taught to children in elementary

school.

 It could be written by a man or a woman, rich or poor, Jew, Muslim, or Christian, or even

someone not connected to a religion.

 It should have a redemptive element to atone for past sins, leading to justice.

 It must be flexible enough in character to appeal to both sides of the political spectrum.

 The song would have tensions within, balancing fervency, pride, and humility.

 It would be appropriate for celebration as well as commemoration.

In short, it would be a difficult task to include the many facets needed to produce this jewel of a song. Still, someone may be writing one today, as the patriotic hymnal is open-ended, and it is entirely possible that such a song may emerge that will be a future challenge to "The Star-

Spangled Banner" for a new national anthem.

Today, we hear patriotic songs on national holidays, and during civic or military observances, but some of the most memorable times we dust off the patriot hymnal is during times of national crisis. In the days following the September 11 terrorist attacks, as plans formed for the memorial service at the National Cathedral, one irony came full-circle. The great mezzo-soprano, Denyce Graves, an African-American, sang "America the Beautiful", comforting the nation, no longer excluded as Marian Anderson was, but fully welcomed as her stately presence and her rich voice soared and worked to heal a shocked populace. Karen Hughes, 69 assistant to president George W. Bush, had struggled with the inclusion of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as the final song in the program, Stauffer writes. She noted in her meeting with the president that the song was very long, and was even considered militant; it had been excluded from some churches' hymnals because of its ethos of defiance. The president did not see a problem, and he approved the song by telling Hughes: "Defiance is good." When the president spoke at the service, he asked God to bless the nation in the coming battles, essentially declaring war from the National Cathedral's pulpit. As the Navy Sea Chanters in their dress whites began the "Battle Hymn," attendees rose and joined in, tears streaming down faces. Condoleeza Rice noted that in the final verse, everything turned, deep sadness was replaced with resolve, as

Americans were called on to "die to make men free" (Stauffer 4-5).

Members of Congress singing "God Bless America" after the September 11 terrorist attacks 70

As other memorials took place, one in Yankee Stadium hosted by Oprah Winfrey, and one in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where during its singing Queen Elizabeth bit her lip fighting back tears, the "Battle Hymn" was a central focus and the unofficial American response to the attacks. Its combination of comfort and defiance made it, in Stauffer's words, a "saber- rattling tear-jerker," perfect to console and fortify (6). In the dedication services for the

September 11 Memorial a decade later, the performance of "Amazing Grace" was the central focus. Perhaps the very paradoxes that seem contradictory in patriotic songs are elements that lift them to a higher plane and purpose, that give them a complexity and tension of strength and endurance, and speak to differing views among citizens. No doubt time really does help heal the wounds of war, and the citizenry has less use for a saber-rattler and desires a song about a city on a hill, the beauty of the landscape, or the grace of God. How can we expect one national hymn to reflect the ideals of a country filled with millions of people from differing backgrounds, many of whom have a history of tradition from other countries with their own nationalistic music? We cannot. Yet in our patriotic hymnal there is a collection of songs that satisfy, that transcend, that guide our eyes up beyond the mundane to the ideals of a future for which we hope. These songs celebrate the land in times of peace--the fruited plain and the redwood forests; they sustain us in times of war--we hear the voice of the trumpet that never sounds retreat, and cling to the assurance that the flag is still there. They represent a vision of that which America can become-- a sweet land of liberty, made for you and me, where we were once lost, but now are found.

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Patriotic song lyrics from various sources, Public Domain.