The stories behind other patriotic songs

America (My Country, ’Tis of Thee) Written by:

Massachusetts Baptist seminary student Samuel Smith

First performed:

At an Independence Day celebration in Boston in 1831.

While working on an class assignment to translate a German songbook, Smith found one song he liked so much — with the same melody the British national anthem, “God Save the King” — that he wrote new lyrics for it. The song would go on to become the unofficial national anthem for most of the 1800s.

Battle Hymn of the Republic Written by:

Julia Ward Howe, an American author and social reformer

First published:

In the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862.

Howe tagged along when her husband, a doctor, toured a Union army camp along the Potomac near Washington, D.C. She saw them marching to the tune of an old Methodist hymn, “John Brown’s Body,” and was inspired to write new lyrics for them to march to.

The song went on to become a favorite of Union soldiers as well as Civil Rights activists in the 1960s. The lyrics would be the source of the title of John Steinbeck’s novel “Grapes of Wrath.”

Stars and Stripes Forever Written by:

Composer and bandleader John Philip Sousa

First performed:

At Philadelphia’s Willow Grove Park on May 14, 1897. While returning via steamer from a European vacation, Sousa received news of the death of the manager of his band. He said the march formed in his head while he paced the deck thinking about all the work that awaited him back home. Sousa wrote it down on Christmas Day 1896 and his band played it at every concert afterwards.

In 1987, Congress made it the official march of the United States.

You’re a Grand Old Flag

Written by:

New York composer George Cohan for the musical “George Washington, Jr.”

First performed:

On the play’s opening night, Feb. 6, 1906.

Cohan once met an old Civil War veteran who carried around a flag from Gettysburg. When asked about it, the old man would say: “She’s a grand old rag.” Cohan originally wrote the song that way but changed it after theatergoers complained at what they perceived to be an insult.

This would be the first song from a musical to sell more than 1 million copies of sheet music.

God Bless America Written by:

Composer and lyricist Irving Berlin

First performed:

By singer Kate Smith on Nov. 11, 1938.

Berlin composed the song while serving as an Army bandleader in World War I but didn’t feel it was right for the revue he was working on, so he put it aside. With war again on the horizon in 1938, he pulled it back out and tightened up the lyrics for Kate Smith’s Armistice Day radio show. It would go on to be featured in the 1943 patriotic musical “This Is the Army.”

Among critics of the song’s religious theme: Woody

Guthrie, who composed “This Land Is Your Land” as a response.