HYMN HISTORY
“AMERICA the BEAUTIFUL”
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!
Scholar and poet Katherine Lee Bates first published “America the Beautiful” in 1895 in a church magazine called The Congregationalist.
According to biographer Lynn Sherr, she only received $5 for it. Little did she know her inspired words would eventually secure her a place in history.
Bates was born Aug. 12, 1859, to a minister and a teacher in Falmouth, Mass. Her father died shortly thereafter and her mother moved to Wellesley Hills, Mass., to be near family. Despite financial hardship, her mother placed a priority on education, and so Bates was eventually able to attend Wellesley College. It was one of the few colleges open to women in the 19th century. After graduation, she taught in various places before returning to Wellesley as an English professor in 1888. She eventually became head of the department.
In the summer of 1893, the 33-year-old Bates taught a lecture series at Colorado College, and as many a tourist does, went up the famous Pike’s Peak, near Colorado Springs, to see the view.
Pike’s Peak is 14,114 feet and on a clear day, hundreds of miles of spectacular scenery can be seen, even into Oklahoma, according to some tour guides.
The awe-inspiring sight of mountain peaks, lush vegetation, distant plains and more greeted Bates and her fellow travelers.
“We strangers celebrated the close of the session by a merry expedition to the top of Pike’s Peak, making the ascent by the only method then available for people not vigorous enough to achieve the climb on foot nor adventurous enough for burro-riding. Prairie wagons, their tail-boards emblazoned with the traditional slogan, “Pike’s Peak or Bust,” were pulled by horses up to the half-way house, where the horses were relieved by mules,” Bates said, according to the Library of Congress. “We were hoping for half an hour on the summit, but two of our party became so faint in the rarified air that we were bundled into the wagons again and started on our downward plunge so speedily that our sojourn on the peak remains in memory hardly more than one ecstatic gaze. It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sealike expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.”
A plaque commemorating her trip is at the summit of Pike’s Peak.
It wasn’t just the view from the mountaintop that inspired her song. During her train trip from Massachusetts to Colorado, she must have viewed many “amber waves of grain.” According to Sherry Younger with chicagonow.com, Bates also saw the white buildings from the Chicago’s World Fair, which gave rise to the line “thine alabaster cities gleam.”
After the song’s publication, it caught on with
the public, who sang it to pretty much any popular tune, including “Auld Lang Syne.”
According to the Library of Congress, the song is “‘an expression of patriotism at its finest.’ It conveys an attitude of appreciation and gratitude for the nation’s extraordinary physical beauty and abundance, without triumphalism.”
It wasn’t until 1904 that “America the Beautiful” was joined with the tune “Materna.”
New Jersey church organist Samuel Augustus Ward had written “Materna” after a day spent at Coney Island in New York. How exactly his melody and Bates’ poem found each other is lost to time, but the public seemed to find them the perfect fit as that is how the song is still sung today. Ward and Bates never met or corresponded with one another. Ward died the year before his tune would forever takes its place on the national stage, and his family never made any money from his music, according to Younger.
Bates went on to write other poems and pieces of literature but none ever gained the heights of “America the Beautiful.” She died March 28, 1929, in Wellesley.
There was a movement in the early 20th century to make “America the Beautiful” the national anthem. It was a top contender along with “My Country Tis of Thee” and “The Star Spangled Banner.” To many a citizen’s disappointment, it lost when Herbert Hoover signed a law in 1931 making “The Star Spangled Banner” the national anthem.
Fans of “America the Beautiful” haven’t given up, however. For decades, petitions have circulated to have it changed to the national anthem. Musician Ray Charles, who has performed one of the most famous versions of the song, is certainly in favor of making the switch. He asked, “Wouldn’t you rather sing about the beauty of America?”
A Google search reveals that the good fight has continued into the 21st century.
“That the hymn has gained … such a hold as it has upon our people, is clearly due to the fact that Americans are at heart idealists, with a fundamental faith in human brotherhood,” Bates said.