America, America, God shed his grace on thee.

I was born on July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate.  The bloodlines of the world run in my veins, because I offered freedom to the oppressed.  I am many things and many people. I am the nation!

I am 195 million living souls and the ghosts of millions who have
lived and died for me.

I am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere.  I stood at Lexington and
fired the shot heard around the world.  I am Washington,     
Jefferson, and Patrick Henry.  I am John Paul Jones,  Davy Crockett and the Green
Mountain Boys.  I am Lee and Grant and Abe
Lincoln.

Let Freedom Ring!

I remember the Alamo, the Maine, Pearl Harbor.  When freedom called, I answered and stayed until it was over, over there.  I left my heroic dead in Flanders Fields, on the rock of Corregidor, on the bleak slopes of Korea, in the steaming jungles of Vietnam.

I am the Brooklyn Bridge, the wheat fields of Kansas and the
granite hills of Vermont. I am the coalfields of the Virginia.  I am the fertile
lands of the west, the Golden Gate,  and the
Grand Canyon.  I am Independence Hall, the Monitor, and the  
Merrimac.

Let Freedom Ring!

I am big.  I sprawl from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  My arms reach out to embrace Alaska and Hawaii - three million square miles throbbing with industry.  I am more than three million farms.  I am forest, field, mountain and desert.  I am quiet  villages and cities that never sleep.  You can look at me and see Ben Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with his breadloaf under his arm.   You can see Betsy Ross with her needle. You can see the lights of Christmas and hear the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" as the calendar turns.

Let Freedom Ring!

I am Babe Ruth and the World Series.  I am than 130,000
schools and colleges and more than 320,000 churches where my
people worship God as they think best.  I am a ballot dropped into a box, the roar of a crowd in a stadium, and the voice of a choir in a 
cathedral.  I am an editorial in a newspaper and a letter to a      
congressman.  I am Eli Whitney and  Stephen Foster, Tom Edison, Albert Einstein and Billy Graham.  I am Horace Greeley, Will Rogers and the Wright brothers.  I am  George Washington Carver, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jonas Salk and John F. Kennedy.  I am Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman and Thomas Paine.

America, America, God shed his grace on thee.

I am John Glenn and Neil Armstrong and their fellow  astronauts who whirl above my head.

Yes, I am the nation and these are the things I am.  I was  
conceived in freedom and God willing, in freedom I will spend.
the rest of my days.

May I always possess the courage and the strength and the integrity to keep myself unshackled, to remain a citadel of freedom and a beacon of hope to the world.  This is my wish, my goal, my prayer in this year 1969.  192 years after I was born!

America, America, God shed his grace on thee.  And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!

God shed his grace, his grace thee!