Boston-born Baptist minister and academic (1808–1895) best known as the lyricist of “America” (“My Country ’Tis of Thee”), written while he was a student at Andover Theological Seminary. Smith’s stirring patriotic song, set to the same melody as the British national anthem (“God Save the Queen”), served as a de facto national anthem for much of the nineteenth century. ALS, signed “S. F. Smith,” one lightly lined page, 5.25 x 8.25, May 30, 1876. Smith writes from England to the Honorable J. F. C. Hyde. In part: “I take the pleasure in participating in the approaching patriotic meeting of our fellow citizens, and though late … I send you the foregoing lines. It may gratify your imaginings to know that they were written partly at Sheffield, where the sweet Christian poet Montgomery lived and labored and loved and died, honored & lamented, and partly on the banks of Lake Windermere, where Wordsworth lived and wrote himself into immortality….” The adjacent leaf bears the “foregoing lines” Smith alludes to, a five-stanza poem (the last two lines written on the reverse). In part: How pure in zeal, how firm in faith,/Sternly the early patriots stood!/Ready to buy—come life or death—/Their freedom at the price of blood…. A century’s march, through peace and blood,/Has left their influence still impressed/On all the hills their footsteps trod,/On fields their presence never blessed. Our father’s God, we own thy power,/Thy mighty fiat made us free;/Our help in that decisive hour,/Still may we put our trust in thee.” Accompanied by a first-edition copy of Smith’s book Poems of Home and Country; Also, Sacred and Miscellaneous Verse (Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1895), which reprints the poem with the dateline “Windermere, England, May 30, 1876” (corresponding to the letter above.) A passage from the above letter has been quoted in a different hand at the bottom of the book page. Intersecting mailing folds (pinhole at intersection), a few wrinkles and small creases, and a few faint stains and smudges to letter, and an ink blot to one word of note in book, otherwise fine condition. R&R COA.
