In 1900 John Philip Sousa took his band on tour and led a number of highly successful concerts in Paris. The most notable of them took place on July 4 that year, at the unveiling of the Lafayette Monument, a statue given to the French by the United States government on behalf of American children. At that event Sousa premiered this march, which became one of his best-known. Long after the composer's death, it was used to celebrate another historic event also involving a famous statue, this time the Statue of Liberty, on the occasion of its rededication in 1986.

This march is certainly one of Sousa's most characteristic, though it may come as a surprise to learn that the composer fashioned parts of it from one of his (apparently discarded) operettas. Hail to the Spirit of Liberty opens with a festive march theme, the music jaunty and bright with many perky upper-register sonorities. As was typical of Sousa, the latter part of the march is devoted to a variant of the main theme and begins in a subdued, relaxed mood, not unlike the second half of Star and Stripes Forever. But in the Liberty march here, fully two-thirds of its three-minute-plus duration focuses on this stately, suave new theme. Goaded by a jubilant piccolo, it gradually builds and takes on the kind of festive, quasi-boisterous character heard at the outset. A rousing, colorful conclusion closes out this brilliant patriotic march.

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