Patriotic Songs Once Taught in American Classrooms

Sep 21, 2010 Michael Streich

Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean Patriotic Song - Library of Congress Photo Image

Instilling patriotism in American schools often relied on teaching patriotic songs and ballads that included references to God and Christian imagery.

Throughout the 19th and into most of the 20th Century, American school children learned to sing patriot songs as well as popular ballads or folklore tunes that demonstrated aspects of American pride and uniqueness. Much of this ended during the Vietnam War period. By the 1960s even the youngest school children were listening to rock and high school teens were attending rock concerts. Much of this music protested Vietnam and perceived notions of United States’ neo-imperialism. Inevitably, patriot songs and popular ballads slowly departed from American public classrooms. In 2010, most Americans can still identify The Star Spangled Banner, but few know the words to the national anthem.

Popular Patriotic Songs Highlighted American Nationalism

Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean was one of the most popular songs taught school children up to the latter years of the 20th Century. As demonstrated in the lyrics, “Columbia” was a synonym for the United States. Columbia was “the home of the brave and the free.” The uniqueness of the national vision was seen in such phrases as, “A world offers homage to thee…Thy banners make tyranny tremble…”

Columbia is portrayed as a ship, a symbol often used in American literature as in Walt Whitman’s O Captain My Captain or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem O Ship of State. In 1877 Oliver Wendell Holmes penned Ship of State, reflecting, in part, the electoral crisis of 1876. Thomas a Becket’s Columbia similarly refers to America as “The ark then of freedom’s foundation,” a reference to the Genesis ark which saved humanity from the devastation of the cataclysmic flood.

Christianity Highlighted in Patriotic Songs

Before the Supreme Court struck down prayer in the schools in the cases of Engel v Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v Schempp (1962), references to God in the public school classroom were common place, including the songs taught students. The final verse of The Star Spangled Banner, for example, states “Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation…And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”

America the Beautiful, which dates to the late 19th Century, mentions God several times. In the first verse, Katharine Bates wrote, “America! America! God shed his grace on thee…” My Country Tis of Thee ends with a prayer or supplication: “protect us by thy might, great God, our King.” During November, students were frequently taught the song Come Ye Thankful People, Come, written by George J. Elvey in conjunction with Thanksgiving. The song – which is really a hymn, contains lines like “God our Maker” and “Come to God’s own temple, come.”

After the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks, members of the Congress stood one evening on the steps of the still locked-down Capitol building and sang God Bless America. Written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and popularized by Kate Smith, many Americans see the song as the second national anthem. But such patriotic songs are no longer in the school repertoire because of the connection to God and Christianity.

Will Patriotic Songs Fade into History?

Yankee Doodle may still be studied, and possibly sung by students with daring teachers, as an example of colonial American ballads. But most Americans pre-teens and early-teens will more readily identify with child singers like Justin Bieber whose songs are anything but patriotic.

It is also possible that the extreme interpretations of separation of church and state have made it impossible to resurrect once-popularly taught songs because of the frequent mention of God. This has even impacted the ability of public schools to include, for example, Christmas songs, even though they may be part of American history.

O Little Town of Bethlehem, for example, was written by an American Episcopal priest in 1868. Away in a Manager, although attributed to reformer Martin Luther, also has strong American connections dating to the late 19th Century.

Educational Motives Tied to American Patriotic Songs

Until the large immigrant migrations brought Catholics to American shores, the United States identified its mission with Protestant Christian vision, rooted in the Puritan City on a Hill. Songs and poems highlighted that singular national mission. Educating future generations included songs that built upon that mission.

God, in American history, was always seen as the great Provider who blessed the efforts of the Republic. Thus, the “boast of the red, white, and blue” in the lyrics from Columbia the Gem of the Ocean was to stand firm against global tyranny because God was on America’s side. All patriotism must have deity as a guiding force. America’s patriotic music provides that important aspect.

Sources:

Music for the Family, Volume Eleven, Childcraft (Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1961)

Copyright Michael Streich. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

 

Origin of the Star Spangled Banner

Oct 8, 2010 Michael Streich

Ft McHenry Under Fire September 1814 - Library of Congress Image

Francis Scott Key wrote the words of the national anthem on the morning of September 14, 1814 after witnessing the bombardment of Ft McHenry by the British.

On the morning of September 14, 1814, a young Georgetown lawyer aboard a British-held ship looked up at Fort McHenry, which had endured over twenty-four hours of relentless bombardment in the effort to protect Baltimore. In the “dawn’s early light,” Francis Scott Key could see Mary Young Pickersgill’s massive flag “gallantly streaming.” Inspired and proud, Key wrote a poem on the back side of a letter. His four stanza poem became The Star Spangled Banner, officially deemed the national anthem by Congress in 1931.

The British Attack on Fort McHenry in the War of 1812

By mid-1814, the British government decided to “chastise” the United States by conducting numerous raids and attacks on coastal cities. This culminated in the burning of Washington City and a follow-up attack on Baltimore. The Baltimore attack was to pursue the same strategy that had led to the taking of Washington: a direct land attack by veteran British troops supported by the navy.

Baltimore, however, was strongly defended. Under the command of Major General Samuel Smith, every available citizen was drafted into the effort to improve fortifications and defend the city. Fort McHenry, commanded by Major George Armistead, was defended by 1,000 men. Their intention was to stop Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane from taking Baltimore.

The Rocket’s Red Glare, The Bombs Bursting in Air

Francis Scott Key had arrived aboard a British ship four days earlier to negotiate the release of an elderly captured doctor. The British commander detained Key so that British plans would not be disclosed. Key was treated with civility, although he later noted the arrogance and vulgarity of the officers.

Cochrane kept his ships out of range of Fort McHenry’s heavy guns, but ordered smaller boats to approach the fort and bombard the structure with Congreve rockets. No always accurate, these bombs frequently exploded in the air before hitting their targets. Additionally, their bursting gave off a red glow. Key would have noticed this through the “perilous fight,” which lasted throughout the night.

The Star Spangled Banner Recalls American Freedom

The British viewed their actions against the Americans as punitive. The United States had declared war at a crucial moment in European history. Englishmen saw the war declaration as patricide, a betrayal that could only assist the French “tyrant,” Napoleon.

Following Napoleon’s disastrous foray into Russia, however, European powers were on the verge of finally ending Napoleon’s rule. This allowed Britain to turn full attention to North America. It also meant that a poorly equipped American militia would face seasoned British regulars.

For Americans, the War of 1812 was, as some historians have called it, a second war of independence. It would mean an end to the British policy of impressment and the evacuation of British garrisons from the American frontier. All four stanzas of Key’s poem end with the same line: “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

Only in the first stanza is this distinctive line phrased as a question. Does the flag still wave? The question was not only pertinent to the morning of September 14th, 1814, but was applied, by the other stanzas, to the entire American experiment in self-government. Stanza four, for example, begins, “Oh! Thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand, between their loved home and the war’s desolation!”

This was also a hope that future generations would react similarly. “Thus be it ever…” refers to the standing of freemen in defense of their homes. Home refers both to the individual homes men left to defend as well as the national home. These men were the only line between survival and “desolation.”

The Fourth Stanza of the Star Spangled Banner

Ever since John Winthrop’s characterization of the Puritan community as a “City on a Hill,” Americans had viewed their national mission through the lens of divine providence. According to Key, America’s victory was achieved by the “Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.” Key also writes that our “motto” is “In God is our trust.”

The divine “Power” is linked to situations when Americans must conquer, but only in a just cause. This notion fit well with Key’s own religious convictions, arising out of his Episcopalian beliefs. Key, a slave owner, also actively advocated for the American Colonization Society. Key’s sister was married to Roger B. Taney who would become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and rule that blacks were not citizens in the 1857 Dred Scott Decision.

The meaning of Key’s final stanza must therefore be analyzed carefully in regard to religious application, because the language does not equate with, for example, the views of God arising out of the Second Great Awakening. Nonetheless, the Star Spangled Banner continues to be the best expression of American resolve of freedom and independence.

Sources:

• Donald R. Hickey, The Wear of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (University of Illinois Press, 1989)
• Sam Meyer, Paradoxes of Fame: The Francis Scott Key Story (Eastwind Publishing, 1995)
• Page Smith, The Shaping of America: A People’s History of the Young Republic, Volume Three (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1980)

Copyright Michael Streich. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

 

Postmillennialism and the Coming of the Rapture

Eschatological Changes in the History of American Protestantism

Jan 24, 2010 Michael Streich

Schofield's Bible Helped Spread Dispensationalism - Gracey/Morguefile

Until the advent of John Darby's Dispensationalism, American Protestantism followed a Post millennial view that highlighted American progressivism as a Utopian age began.

Most American Protestants in the 19th-century followed a postmillennial view of eschatology. This view suggested a Bible interpretation that linked the return of Christ with the end of the final age or millennium, a period of progressive Utopianism that presaged the golden age of a new Kingdom of God on earth. Closely identified with this view was the notion of an antichrist or the spirit of antichrist seeking to thwart the inevitable progress toward a glorious end of time.

Post Civil War Eschatology

Most Protestants living in the post Civil War years saw the growing national prosperity, industrial innovation, and global expansion as evidence of the building of a better community and world community. The strength of the latter 19th century missionary movement was based on two conclusions related to this view: the “Great Commission” to evangelize would bring the Gospel to every corner of the world and American progress would uplift the inferior peoples of disparate cultures to a new level of “civilization.”

President William McKinley’s decision to annex the Philippines after winning the Spanish American War is one example, based on his statements to the press in which he claimed to have received his answer to the problem from God. Popular Protestant hymns such as “We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations” postulated a postmillennial view of missions. Other Protestant hymns, many still found in current hymnals, infer the same eschatological views.

Challenges of New Interpretations and the End of the Great War

World War I had a profound effect on Protestant eschatology. All of modern man’s progress had led to a war of carnage. Was this the sign of a postmillennial era? Although there had been social setbacks accompanying progress and prosperity like the severe economic downturns of the 1890s and the rise of violent labor strikes often fueled by Socialism, the nation had managed to extricate itself and continue on the path of eventual Utopianism.

Additionally, Evangelical Protestantism became strongly influenced by the teaching of John Nelson Darby, a founder of the English sect known as Plymouth Brethren. Darby and the Brethren had been influenced by Robert Norton’s 1861 book, The Restoration of Apostles and Prophets; In the Catholic Apostolic Church. Norton’s teachings revolutionized eschatology by advocating a two-stage return of Christ and for the first time introduced the idea of a “rapture” of the Church.

Darby incorporated this belief into his own theological system known as Dispensationalism, which divides human history into distinct ages or dispensations. Darby and the Brethren deeply influenced Cyrus Scofield. According to theologian Oswald T. Allis, “The Dispensational teaching of today, as represented, for example, by the Scofield Reference Bible, can be traced back directly to the Brethren Movement which arose in England and Ireland about the year 1830.”

Protestant Eschatology in a Post Modern World

Ever since the Millerites in the Second Great Awakening failed to witness Christ’s return as they waited on mountaintops, certain Christian denominations have predicted the end of time, identified antichrists, and given dates for the “rapture” of saints. Herbert W. Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Radio Church of God in California, published several dates. Others point to natural catastrophes as “signs of the end.” Pat Robertson recently equated the Haiti earthquake to that nation’s “pact with the devil.”

Christian views of an “end time” are many and vary greatly. The diversity of American Protestantism contributes to the rich literature of prophetic interpretation. Yet the view of latter ancient Judaism may still universalize a sense of hope in its non-specific belief of “the age to come.” Jesus, who equated the end with his own return, left the simple command, “occupy till I come.” (Luke 19:13)

References:

• “Justification by Faith and the Identity of Antichrist,” Present Truth, September 1974, Vol. 3, No. 4, Robert D. Brinsmead, Editor
• “The Eschatological Nature of the Old Testament Hope,” Present Truth, April 1976, Vol. 5, No. 2, Robert D. Brinsmead, Editor
• [Present Truth maintained a policy of not publishing contributing author’s names]
• James A, Morone, Hellfire Nation (Yale University Press, 2003)

Copyright Michael Streich. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

 

William Miller and the Adventist Movement in the Early 1840s

Oct 22, 2010 Michael Streich

William Miller Preached the Return of Christ - Wikimedia Photo Image

The legacy of Miller and the Adventist movement continues with American Exceptionalism and Christian Reconstructionism.

The Millerite movement of the 1830s and early 1840s characterized the revivalist nature of American religion toward the end of the Andrew Jackson presidency. The Millerites, like other groups at the time, were Adventist in orientation, believing in the imminent return of Christ. William Miller, the founder, even set a specific date. These premillennialists, however, differed from the post-millennialists that saw the age moving toward Utopian perfection. For them, Christ’s return could not be deconstructed to an exact hour and day. Nonetheless, the Millerites represented widely accepted beliefs within the revivalist atmosphere and influenced contemporary views of American Exceptionalism.

William Miller Founds a New Denomination

William Miller, a farmer from New York, began his religious odyssey as a deist. He became a Baptist and began to study the Bible. These studies, notably his reading of prophetic Old Testament books like Daniel, contributed to his understanding of the imminent return of Christ.

Miller was self-taught; he had never received any formal education, unlike, for example, Charles G. Finney, a leader in the Second Great Awakening. In this, Miller was like other itinerant preachers of the time who attempted to interpret the Bible. Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Mormons, is another example.

Setting a Date for the Return of Christ

Miller’s predictions of Christ’s return were widely received. His followers urged him to give a specific date. Based on numerical calculations taken from prophetic clues in Daniel, he set the date of Christ’s return on October 22, 1844. Many of his followers sold their possessions or gave them away as the day approached.

While some followers were disappointed when the day passed without incident and turned to other denominations, ardent supporters formed themselves into a number of Adventist groups, the most enduring of which is the Seventh Day Adventist church.

Adventism and Social Reform Following the Panic of 1837

The Panic of 1837 had left many middleclass Americans as well as the working poor disillusioned with a system that revivalist preachers told them was based on corruption and greed. Adventism or millennialism played a key role not only in redefining the personal nature of man’s relationship to God as well as man’s anticipation of the building of God’s kingdom on earth, but helped spark other social reform movements such as prison reform, better conditions in asylums, and abolitionism.

Both William Lloyd Garrison and Angelina Grimke Weld, prominent leaders in the abolition movement, took inspiration from the Millerite message. The fact that Christ’s physical kingdom was associated with the United States validated the conclusion that Americans were a chosen people.

One faction of Mormons, for example, believed that Christ’s New Jerusalem would be built at Independence, Missouri, one of the early Mormon communities. The fusion of a specific and unique American destiny based on millennial expectations has been linked to religious nationalism or, as historian Page Smith writes, “Extreme nationalism.”

Exceptionalism and Christian Reconstructionism

Closely connected to the millennial and Adventist beliefs that were so prominent in the early 19th Century is the belief in American Exceptionalism and Christian Reconstructionism. These views have become entrenched in 21st Century conservative American political ideology. On September 13, 2008, CBS News reported that Sarah Palin referenced American Exceptionalism several times during a rally.

More recently, in an interview with Politico (August 20, 2010), Baptist minister and GOP presidential nominee in 2008 Mike Huckabee stated that, “to deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation.”

Nevada GOP Senate Candidate in the 2010 mid-term election, Sharron Angle, has frequently been accused of Christian Reconstructionism, the idea that the state must reflect Biblical principles, even in matters of civil law. Thus, homosexuality would not be lawful nor would abortion, profanity, or any other infraction of strict Biblical injunctions. This would amount to the Christian version of Shar’ia law which, ironically, conservatives like Angle decry.

The Legacy of William Miller in American Religious and Political History

The debate over millennial expectations raged on after the Millerite movement faded and continues into the current century. Combining Adventist principles with political ideology continues to fuel the culture wars. The legality of the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, being tested in the federal courts, has renewed the social debate regarding homosexuality.

During an October 21, 2010 Senate debate in North Carolina, Democratic challenger Elaine Marshall attacked GOP incumbent Senator Richard Burr for suggesting that homosexuality was a choice, something Colorado GOP candidate Ken Buck said a week earlier, stunning many viewers. There may be a Constitutional separation of church and state, but there is no separation of church and politics.

William Miller left more than the fragments of a movement, discredited by his 1844 prediction. He, along with other religious leaders preaching similar views of Adventism and millennialism, laid a strong foundation for the notion of American exceptionalism, an ideal that can be traced back to John Winthrop’s Puritan “City on a Hill.”

Sources:

• Brian J. L. Berry, America’s Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens From Long-Wave Crises (University Press of New England, 1992)
• Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992)
• Page Smith, The Nation Comes of Age: A People’s History of the Ante-Bellum Years, Volume Four (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981)

Copyright Michael Streich. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

 

Immigration Patterns of the Early 19th Century

Irish and German Migrations Changed American Society

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Dec 22, 2008 Michael Streich

As the new nation came of age, discontent in Europe created immigrant patterns from Ireland and Germany that peaked in the 1850s with millions of new Americans.

The first great wave of immigration began in the 1820s during a period in American history that witnessed expansion, innovation, and the beginning of a modern society. The United States offered hope with the prospect of prosperity and security for many Europeans struggling with the post Napoleonic period. Although thousands came from the British Isles, this first great migration of immigrants represented the Irish and the Germans.

Irish Immigration Patterns in the Early 19th Century

The great potato blight in Ireland created intolerable living conditions as famine swept the land and the British Parliament refused to address the problem. With few options, the Irish crossed the Atlantic by the hundreds of thousands, arriving either in Canada or port cities in the Northeast such as Boston. Unlike the German and Scandinavian immigrants of the same period, the Irish were unskilled and thus forced to find employment near the large northern urban centers.

Irish immigrants helped build the new nation’s infrastructure and ultimately contributed significantly to the Union’s cause during the Civil War. Mass Irish immigration also introduced a broader presence of Roman Catholicism. Although Catholics had a presence in America since the Maryland colony was founded in 1634, by 1838 there were over 800,000 Catholics in the United States led by twelve bishops and 433 priests. [1]

German Immigrants in the Early 19th Century

German immigrants were skilled craftsmen and farmers, coming from Middle Germany in the late 1840s and 1850s. Settling in states like Missouri and Illinois, Germans fled Europe in the wake of the Revolutions of 1848. German-Hungarians, for example, settled by the Empress Maria Theresa in the mid-1700s on the Hungarian frontier, moved to the Chicago area. Many of the German immigrants also brought Catholicism to America.

Earlier German immigrants during the Colonial period had been predominantly Protestant. Members of Pietistic groups like the Moravians, Amish, and Mennonites had settled in Pennsylvania and were known as “Pennsylvania Dutch,” a misnomer attributed to the German word Deutsch (meaning “German”). In the early 1700s, Germans could also be found in the Carolinas and Georgia, notably near Savannah. German contributions during the American War for Independence were many and large numbers of British mercenary soldiers such as the Hessians either stayed when the war ended or made provision to return as immigrants.

Reception of Immigrants by American Society

The arrival of so many immigrants created massive problems in Northern cities. The Five Points district in New York City spawned the cholera outbreak during the presidency of Andrew Jackson which led to stereotyping immigrants by middle class and wealthy Americans. Emerging slums further exacerbated sanitation concerns and produced irrational fears. Xenophobia caused a backlash, especially against the Irish.

By the 1850s, strong nativist feelings led to the formation of the American party, often referred to as the “Know-Nothings.” Believing that low-wage earning immigrants would take away jobs and fearful of the perceived authoritarianism of Catholicism, Know-Nothings attempted to pass strict laws restricting immigrants. No Catholics, for example, could run for office in those jurisdictions controlled briefly by the nativists.

Legacy of the First Great Immigration Migration

Both Irish and German immigrants helped forge the new nation precisely at a time when innovation, creativity, and labor were needed. Germans like Horace Mann in the 1830s and 1840s reformed American education. Carl Schurz, a founder of the Republican Party and a refugee of the 1848 Revolutions in Europe, became a national leader, championing Abraham Lincoln, crusading for party reform after the Civil War, and strongly opposing American imperialism at the turn of the century.

Similarly, Irish immigration produced men and women that would lead the nation. President John F. Kennedy could trace his roots back to the first wave of Irish immigrants coming to Massachusetts. Immigrants made the United States a nation “out of many.”

[1] See Page Smith, A Nation Comes of Age (McGraw Hill) (chapter on immigration)

Other sources:

Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, 2nd Ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 2002)