Thus, in explaining America, the “Ain’t it awful” explanation is always available, if we want it.
Ravaged by climate change. Torn by internecine strife. Gross inequality in the distribution of wealth. Widespread poverty. Drug use. Oppression of women and minorities.
And that was in 1491. Next year things got much worse.
Can’t we choose some other moment in the American chronology to live our living history life in? Surely there was a time when America was in flower, at peace with itself and the world, growing in prosperity and hope, with shared values, respected institutions, and confident love of country. You know, the “Great” that’s the “Again” in the “Make America . . .” thing.
Maybe that moment would be about 1910 when “America the Beautiful” became a popular patriotic song. It’s a stirring tune. Many are of the opinion that it should be our national anthem. It’s much easier to sing than “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Even Roseanne Barr couldn’t butcher it in front of 50,000 irked baseball fans in San Diego at the 1990 Padres–Cincinnati Reds game. (Padres owner Tom Werner was the producer of the Roseanne sitcom—in case you’ve been wondering WTF? for thirty years.) Some find “The Star-Spangled Banner” too bellicose. Others think it contains a coded message advocating open borders (“Jose can you see . . .”) Anyway, nobody ever takes a knee on “And crown thy good with brotherhood.”
But “America the Beautiful” is not so anodyne or naïf as it seems. Its lyricist certainly wasn’t. Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929) studied at Wellesley College and Oxford. She was the head of the English Department at Wellesley, neither then nor now a nest of conservative complacency. She was a formidable social activist supporting women’s suffrage, world peace, unionized labor, slum clearance, poor relief, and immigrant rights. She traveled the world and was a war correspondent for the New York Times during the Spanish-American War, which, as all politically correct people did at the time, she deplored. She was a friend of Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, and William Butler Yeats, as well as a widely published poet herself. Though not, truth to tell, a very good one. Sample this verse from her “In a Northern Wood”:
FRAGRANT are the cedar-boughs stretching green and level,
Feasting-halls where waxwings flit at their spicy revel,
But O the pine, the questing pine, that flings its arms on high
To search the secret of the sun and escalade the sky!
Bates, however, was also a lifelong Republican and quit the GOP in 1924 only because of the party’s refusal to support the League of Nations. Furthermore she may have been gay, sharing a home for twenty-five years with fellow Wellesley professor Katharine Coman. If we are looking for a representative of a simpler time and place, Katharine Lee Bates is the wrong example.
She wrote the words to “America the Beautiful” first as a poem in 1893. (The music it would be set to in 1910 was from an 1882 hymn by the organist and composer Samuel Ward.) Bate’s poem was inspired by a transcontinental train journey from Boston by way of Chicago and Denver to Pikes Peak. To begin with let us recall that trains, before they arrive at purple mountain majesties, don’t pass through the best parts of town.
Now sing along with me. And let’s pay close attention to what Bates is saying.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Only one out of three of which Americans can take any credit for.
Above the fruited plain!
KLB was perfectly aware of the deplorable working conditions of fruit pickers.
America! America!
God shed [Odd word choice. Like a dog sheds? America could use more God on its furniture?] His grace on thee
And crown [sixth definition, Webster’s, “to hit on the head”] thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim [whose arrival on the Mayflower would nowadays be called Christian Right activism] feet,
Whose stern impassioned stress
Like other Puritan groups, the pilgrims would be the source of considerable stress in America.
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.
KLB is putting things tactfully here. It was the germs from the pilgrim’s dirty feet that beat the thoroughfare.
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Implying a tailoring job for the ages.
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
KLB was a Congregationalist, and the Congregational Church was an important force in the temperance movement.
Thy liberty in law.
Which law KLB wanted to change in a variety of ways.
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
When explaining America, “liberating strife” is one way to put it.
Who more than self their country loved
KLB flatters us.
And mercy more than life!
But here she goes too far.
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Advocacy for “hard money” gold standard? KLB was a Republican.
Till all success be nobleness,
But she was also offended by the excesses of the Gilded Age.
And every gain divine!
Still, as mentioned, she was a Republican.
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
The poem was written during the Panic of 1893, a severe economic depression that lasted until 1897.
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
KLB knew full well what dimmed the cities of America. Her reference here is to Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which she presumably saw on her trip west. Temporary buildings representing an optimistic future were sheathed in fine-grained gypsum.
America! America!
God shed [There He goes again. This time a snakeskin comes to mind.] His grace on thee
And crown [not to say clobber] thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
What is America? Do other nations need this much explaining?
Ask, “What is England?” and you’ll get an earful from the Bard by way of Richard II:
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
. . .
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea . . .
Aw, shut your hole.
Ask, “What is China?” and invite a long, boring lecture from sinologists or, worse, from Xi Jinping.
“What is France?” Prepare yourself for a load of brie, and in
