The idea that is America

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his brothers.
- John 15:13

I was reading through some works by Emerson on the night of July 4th (having just returned from the fireworks over Lake Superior), when I came upon the following hymn. It struck just the right chord with me that evening. The poem was read in Music Hall, January 1, 1863 - the day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

Boston Hymn
The word of the Lord by night
To the watching Pilgrims came,
As they sat beside the seaside,
And filled their hearts with flame.

God said, I am tired of kings,
I suffer them no more;
Up to my ear the morning brings
The outrage of the poor.

Think ye I made this ball
A field of havoc and war,
Where tyrants great and tyrants small
Might harry the weak and poor?

My angel,--his name is Freedom,
Choose him to be your king;
He shall cut pathways east and west
And fend you with his wing.

Lo! I uncover the land
Which I hid of old time in the West,
As the sculptor uncovers the statue
When he has wrought his best;

I show Columbia, of the rocks
Which dip their foot in the seas
And soar to the air-borne flocks
Of clouds and the boreal fleece.

I will divide my goods;
Call in the wretch and slave
None shall rule but the humble,
And none but Toil shall have.

I will have never a noble,
No lineage counted great;
Fishers and choppers and ploughmen
Shall constitute a state.

Go, cut down trees in the forest
And trim the straightest boughs;
Cut down trees in the forest
And build me a wooden house.

Call the people together,
The young men and the sires,
The digger in the harvest-field,
Hireling and him that hires;

And here in a pine state-house
They shall choose men to rule
In every needful faculty,
In church and state and school.

Lo, now! if these poor men
Can govern the land and the sea
And make just laws below the sun,
As planets faithful be.

And ye shall succor men;
'Tis nobleness to serve;
Help them who cannot help again
Beware from right to swerve.

I break your bonds and masterships,
And I unchain the slave
Free be his heart and hand henceforth
As wind and wandering wave.

I cause from every creature
His proper good to flow
As much as he is and doeth,
So much he shall bestow.

But, laying hands on another
To coin his labor and sweat,
He goes in pawn to his victim
For eternal years in debt.

To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!

Pay ransom to the owner
And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him.

O North! give him beauty for rags,
And honor, O South! for his shame;
Nevada! coin thy golden crags
With Freedom's image and name.

Up! and the dusky race
That sat in darkness long,--
Be swift their feet as antelopes,
And as behemoth strong.

Come, East and West and North,
By races, as snow-flakes,
And carry my purpose forth,
Which neither halts nor shakes.

My will fulfilled shall be,
For, in daylight or in dark,
My thunderbolt has eyes to see
His way home to the mark.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are a country founded deeply in the search for freedom and the belief (however imperfectly understood) that all men are created equal; we are a great nation built of those at the end of their rope - the poor, the tired, the huddled masses longing to be free; we are a people who for the last century have often stood as a beacon of the truly free in the face of fascism and communism alike; we are a brotherhood that spilled out our blood upon our land for the freedom of an enslaved population - an event repeated nowhere else in the history of the world. This poem brought to mind all those things and more.