Although it was meant as an occasional work, the piece was soon seen as an opportunity to project an uplifting message about the United States in wartime; its premiere was recorded by CBS and quickly broadcast nationwide.
It was also transmitted by shortwave radio over the United States Office of War Information (OWI) network to Allied servicemen stationed in Europe.
On April 14, 1945, it was performed by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall as part of a concert in memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died two days earlier.
Our internal resources are great… We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favor towards us, that His Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves.
With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
In our native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves; against violence actually offered; we have taken up arms.