Lyrics God Bless The Usa

Country's earlier anthem was a tiny bit easier on the ears

I n the days leading up to the 1869 Fourth of July, the city of Boston hosted a massive, 10-day National Peace Jubilee, complete with an 10,000-member choir and a 1,000-piece orchestra that performed songs of national significance to celebrate a reunited country.

The high point of the festival was a resounding rendition of "America, My Country 'Tis of Thee." When the closing strains of the anthem were sung, bells all over the city began to ring and the guns of a nearby battery were fired. To cap it off, 1,000 red-coated firemen gave a clang on as many anvils.

Before President Herbert Hoover made "The Star Spangled Banner" our official national anthem, Americans sang numerous unofficial patriotic songs. "Hail, Columbia" and "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" were often used at state events in the 19th century, but few anthems were as popular among the general public as "America, My Country 'Tis of Thee."

From the 1830s through the early years of the 20th century, Americans sang versions of this song at nearly every public festival and civic ceremony. School children memorized it, and all good citizens stood up upon hearing it.

Samuel Francis Smith, a Boston minister, wrote the lyrics in 1831 and put them to a well-known tune of the day, which also happened to be that of the British anthem, "God Save the King." Ironically, Smith had no idea of the tune's association with the British monarchy. The tune was popular all over the English-speaking world and different verses had been sung to it since it was written in 1745.

The Sunday school children of Boston's Park Street Church first performed Smith's version of the song on the Fourth of July, 1831. Its celebration of liberty, patriotism and America's natural beauty fit the times and it became an immediate sensation.

The song's simple tune and meter made new lyrical variations easy to create and people across the nation used it as a rallying cry in numerous political and social movements. During the Civil War both North and South sang it (the South adopted different lyrics) and for the remainder of the 19th century, reformers, including abolitionists, women suffragists, temperance advocates, and labor unions, used the song with different lyrics as a form of political persuasion.

The song's popularity waned during the First World War as Americans felt the need for a national tune different from that of Great Britain. Also, its association with 19th century social reform seemed passé in the emerging era of American power and empire.

THE GREAT ENTERTAINERS MEDIA ARCHIVE: REMEMBERING: GOD BLESS AMERICA

"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and revised by him in 1938, as sung by Kate Smith (becoming her signature song)."God Bless America" takes the form of a prayer (intro lyrics "as we raise our voices, in a solemn prayer") for God's blessing and peace for the nation ("...stand beside her and guide her through the night..."). Berlin wrote the song in 1918 while serving in the U.S. Army at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York, but decided that it did not fit in a revue called Yip Yip Yaphank, so he set it aside. The lyrics at that time included the line, "Make her victorious on land and foam, God bless America..." as well as "Stand beside her and guide her, to the right with the light from above." In 1938, with the rise of Hitler, Berlin, who was Jewish and a first-generation European immigrant, felt it was time to revive it as a "peace song", and it was introduced on an Armistice Day broadcast in 1938 sung by Kate Smith, on her radio show. Berlin had made some minor changes; by this time, "to the right" might have been considered a call to the political right, so he substituted "through the night" instead. He also provided an introduction that is now rarely heard but which Smith always used: "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, / As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer." More than just the dramatic words and melody, the arrangement for Kate Smith's performance was accompanied by full band, progressing into a grand march tempo, with trumpets triple reinforcing the harmonies between stanzas: the dramatic build-up ends on the final exposed high note, which Kate Smith sang in the solo as a sustained a cappella note, with the band then joining for the finale. The song was a hit; there was even a movement to make "God Bless America" the national anthem of the United States. However, there was strong opposition by conservative southerners as well as conservatives who lived in rural areas where there were no Jews living in it, stating that because Irving Berlin was a foreigner and a Jew, that they would not accept their national anthem to be composed by a member of the minority class Congress would have had to repeal the "Star Spangled Banner" in both houses by two-thirds of the votes. In 1943, Smith's rendition was featured in the patriotic musical "This is the Army" along with other Berlin songs.

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