“My Country Tis of Thee”, sometimes known as “America”, is a patriotic song about the United States of America.  The song’s lyrics were written by Reverend Samuel Francis Smith and set to the melody of the British national anthem. The song remains a very important part of the history of the United States.

Smith wrote the lyrics while in Seminary school in 1832 in Andover, Mass.  Many sources claim he wrote the lyrics a year earlier, but sources written by Smith put the date as 1831, so we can assume the other sources are incorrect. The story behind the lyrics is often disputed, but we do know that one of his acquaintances named Lowell Smith had recently asked him to translate some German books of songs and to possibly pen some new lyrics. Smith did not understand the words, but knew one of the songs he was looking at was patriotic. He really liked the tune, which he surprisingly did not recognize as the same tune that was used for the British national anthem. The song also had a long history in the United States, dating back to at least the 1770s. It was used as the melody for various patriotic songs, including “God Save George Washington” and “God Save the Thirteen States”. Instead of translating the lyrics to the German song that was called “God Bless Our Native Land”, he wrote his own words and originally five different verses that talked about the glory of living in America, and the evils of the British Empire.

After Smith gave the completed lyrics to his friend Lowell Mason, it was first performed in Boston, Massachusetts on July 4th, 1832. This first performance was at a church for an Independence Day celebration for kids. The song was sent to publication by Mason and was first published in that same year. The song went on to become the national anthem of the United States for the next ninety-nine years, when it was officially replaced by “The Star Spangled Banner” in 1931.

Unlike Francis Scott Key’s “The Star Spangled Banner”, many copies of Smith’s “America” survive today in their original form. Key was known to change words on his copies, but Smith was very careful to make each of his autographed copies the same. The surviving version that he edited around 1890 only contained four verses instead of the original five. The fifth verse had an anti-British tone that Smith later felt bad about writing. This was ironic because it was written to the tune of the anthem of Great Britain. Smith also did not refer to the song by the name “America” until this point in its’ history.

There have been two notable performances of the song in recent years. After the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th, Crosby, Stills & Nash did their version of the song on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on the next episode after the tragedy.

For an excellent course in playing and arranging patriotic songs, click here.