| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Robert James Branham and Stephen J. Hartnett. Sweet Freedom's Song: "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and Democracy in America. New York: Oxford University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 276. $29.95.

This study is a thorough discourse on the many utilizations of "America," the patriotic tune by Samuel Smith commonly known as "My Country 'Tis of Thee." Virtually all American school children learn the song with its original verses. Robert James Branham and Stephen J. Hartnett develop the point that in the nineteenth century, "America" gained such popularity that the tune was employed as a rallying cry in antebellum movements like abolitionism, women's rights, and temperance, as well as in some social and economic reforms of the Gilded Age. 1

As a narrative of the many forms of "America," Branham and Harnett's work provides a wealth of information. The versions of the hymn were many, and the authors have done their research to uncover almost every one of them (although others may rest somewhere in an archive or attic). The contents of most of the renditions were straightforward. A few, notably one by the writer Ambrose Bierce, had real bite. Written in regard to the corporate corruption of the late nineteenth century, Bierce's words are deliciously bitter and have a resonance for people concerned with the corporate atrocities of any age. . . .

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