This wonderful and famous hymn is a special combination of national appreciation, religious faith, historical tribute, and future appeal. Sometimes referred to as the unofficial national anthem, it has been called “an expression of patriotism at its finest.” It is a very fitting hymn to study in the month we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

Written in 1893, its message may be even more pertinent today than it was then. The first two lines of each verse celebrate the nation’s physical beauty and abundance and the human attributes that have made the country great. The last two lines of each verse are prayerful appeals to God for future blessings and to the people for endeavor in things that are of great importance: mending flaws, refinement, brotherhood, self-control, liberty and nobleness.

The poetic language of America the Beautiful is so well known that we may find ourselves singing the words without thinking about their meaning.

For instance, another way to say, “Oh, beautiful for…” is, ‘America is beautiful because of…’

A thoroughfare is a major road or highway affording passage. A major road makes passage easier, thus an easier passage for freedom, as the country expanded through the wilderness, was a great legacy given to us by the daily walk of the passionate Pilgrims (and Patriots.)

The phrase, “Thy liberty in law,” reminds us that only a law-abiding citizenship can maintain liberty in a democratic republic, and could also be a reference to the protection afforded us by the Constitution, and a reminder of the necessity of upholding it.

The author places emphasis on brotherhood, with the phrase “And crown thy good with brotherhood” used twice. The poem was written only twenty-three years after the Civil War ended, and racial segregation was still common. The allusion to brotherhood as a crowning virtue could be a reference to the Biblical second great commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Alabaster is a white translucent mineral, and an alabaster city would appear pure and heavenly as though constructed of opaque white glass. In the last verse the “patriot’s dream” “sees beyond the years,” and brings the conjecture that perhaps the Patriot’s hope was that at the end of time the cities of America would have become as heaven, where there will be no tears.

The author of America the Beautiful, Katharine Lee Bates, was born in 1859, the fifth child of William and Cornelia Frances Lee Bates. William’s family had left England and settled in Hingham, Massachusetts in 1635. His ancestors would therefore most likely have been participants during the Revolutionary War. William was a pastor of the First Congregational Church at Falmouth on Cape Cod at the time of Katharine’s birth. It is believed that a back injury sustained in rescuing fellow passengers from a train wreck in 1853 caused a tumor in his spine, which by May of 1859 forced him to discontinue preaching. Increasing paralysis led to his death when Katharine was only a month old.

Her mother, Cornelia, was a graduate of Mount Holyoake Seminary, a school for young women in South Hadley, Massachusetts, founded in 1837. The school was one of the most rigorous academic institutions a young woman could attend at the time, and most only attended for one year. The poetess Emily Dickinson was one of these. The school also believed that student’s moral and religious lives were part of its responsibility.

With her mother’s example, it follows naturally that after the family moved from Falmouth to Wellesley Hills when she was twelve, Katharine attended Wellesley High School, graduating in 1874. She then proceeded to the more advanced Newton High School, graduating in 1878, and then entered Wellesley College. Thanks to help from her two older brothers, she graduated in 1880 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, having served as president of its second graduating class. She wrote to supplement her income and her poem, “Sleep” was published by The Atlantic Monthly during her undergraduate years. It is said that Longfellow praised her for this poem on their first meeting. Wellesley College is a small liberal arts college for women, founded in 1875 by Henry and Pauline Durant, who believed strongly in the higher education of women. It is located west of Boston, Massachusetts, and became the primary scene of the remainder of Katharine’s life as she returned there to teach.

Her career at Wellesley College spanned 45 years, and she became chair of the English department. It is said she believed that through literature, human values could be revealed and developed. She also studied at Oxford, England, earned her master’s degree in arts from Wellesley College and was awarded several honorary degrees. She traveled several times to Europe and the Middle East on sabbatical and published travel books based on these experiences, as well as books of verse, textbooks and children’s stories. She is said to be the first known writer to introduce “Mrs. Santa Claus” to the American scene. Katharine Bates was said to have inspired immense affection and respect, being gracious, witty, popular and scholarly without being pretentious. She is also reported to have been deeply religious, although without certain faith in any particular church.

Katharine’s religious faith, New England heritage, literary talent and training came together to place her in the annals of American History in the summer of 1893 as she traveled west to lecture at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. At the close of the session she joined with the other travelers on an excursion to the top of Pike’s Peak. No paved road existed at that time, their travel to the top involved rough riding prairie wagons, pulled halfway by horses, then by mules. At the fifteen-thousand foot summit the opening lines of “America the Beautiful” floated into her mind as she “gazed in wordless rapture over the far expanse of mountain ranges and the sealike sweep of plain.” The sojourn on the peak was “hardly more than one ecstatic gaze,” as two of the party became faint with the altitude. However, she said that when she left Colorado Springs, the four stanzas were penciled in her notebook. In traveling to Colorado, she had attended the Chicago World’s Fair, where she said the ‘White City’ at the Columbian Exhibition “made such strong appeal to patriotic feeling that it was in no small degree responsible for at least the last stanza of ‘America the Beautiful.’ It was with this quickened and deepened sense of America that we went on, my New England eyes delighting in the wind waved gold of the vast wheat fields.”

The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 was organized to commemorate the 400^th anniversary of Columbus’ landfall in the New World. The main exhibition buildings were chalky white and of neoclassical design which earned them the moniker of “The White City.”

Absorbed in her work at Wellesley, Katharine Bates kept the poem America the Beautiful in her notebook for more than two years. She copied it out and sent it to a weekly denominational paper, The Congregationalist where it first appeared in print on July 4, 1895. It received an unexpected amount of attention. It was almost at once set to music by Silas G. Pratt, other tunes were written and she received so many requests that she revised some sections to make the phraseology more simple and direct. The new version was published in The Boston Evening Transcript in 1904. It is reported that she received criticism for using the word “beautiful,” which some called hackneyed, but she refused to change it, claiming that it best described America. Only one further revision took place following the 1904 publication, thereafter it was copyrighted and protected.

Katharine died of cancer at home in Wellesley in 1929 and her last collection of verses, America the Dream, was published posthumously.

The first musical setting for America the Beautiful by Silas G. Pratt was published in a collection of famous songs in 1904. For several years the text was sung to almost any popular song or folk-tune with which the lyrics fit; “Auld Lang Syne” was commonly used. A hymn-tune written by Samuel A. Ward in 1882 was later adapted to it and first published in 1910. By wide publication in the song and hymnbooks of the day the melody became entrenched. The sixteenth century hymn text for which the tune was originally written began with the words “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem,” from which the tune name “Materna” derives.

Many composers felt that this tune was inadequate and in 1926 the National Federation of Music Clubs sponsored a contest and offered a prize for a better setting. It is said that about six hundred compositions were submitted, however, a winner was not found and Ward’s music prevailed. The melody in the sixteen-measure ‘Materna’ hymn tune is strictly in C major and the harmonization contains similar chromatic alterations and progressions to those found in popular songs of the time.

Samuel Augustus Ward was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1847. He is believed to be a direct descendant of the American Statesman, Samuel Ward, who was a representative to the Continental Congress. It is said that Samuel was a gifted child, playing the accordion by the age of six, and giving piano lessons as a teenager. Moving to New York at the age of sixteen he became a church organist. Samuel studied music under Jan Pychowski and others in New York City, and returned to found a music store in Newark, where he taught piano and sold sheet music and musical instruments. He also did quite a bit of composition.

In 1880 he became organist at Grace Episcopal Church, Newark. In the fall of 1888, a group of men met in his home for the enjoyment of group singing. This was the beginning of the Newark Orpheus Club, a male glee club. After a few months of weekly meetings they were urged by their friends to give a public performance and this started a tradition of two concerts per year, which continues to this day. Samuel Ward conducted the group for fifteen years and is said to have composed or arranged much of their music during that time.

Samuel died at Newark in 1903, never having met Katharine Bates, nor ever hearing the completed hymn that put him in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.