I was in Florida on Super Bowl Sunday and drove to my friend’s home to watch the game. I put the pregame show on the radio and was still in the car when Brandi Carlile sang “America the Beautiful.” I am a huge Carlile fan, and since I was alone I quietly sang along, which may explain why, for the first time, I was suddenly struck by the concluding verse:
“And crown thy good with brotherhood / From sea to shining sea.”
What does that mean? I asked myself. “To crown thy good with brotherhood.”
Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote the poem the song is based on, seemed to be saying that the reward for acting good was brotherhood. What an interesting formulation. Brotherhood for her was the greatest achievement of all — not “good.” Doing good was the means, but brotherhood was the crowning goal.
I searched the internet for explanations. Bates wrote the poem in 1893, when the United States was grappling with intense industrialization, urbanization and the scars of the Civil War. A flawed Reconstruction had left the country deeply divided. Our national brotherhood was not a given then at all. It is not surprising that she was extolling brotherhood as an ideal.