The musical aspect of the show was a compilation of various numbers relating to American patriotic themes, and through careful coordination with local choral societies, Sousa managed to mount the work with voices numbering in the hundreds. With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Sousa assembled a grand pageant entitled The Trooping of the Colors with which he toured the major American cities. However, Sousa refused to allow the quotation from Gilmore to be altered. Sousa's publisher Church was so nonplussed by the piece that someone on the editorial staff suggested dropping the word "forever" from the title. Although the piece earned three encores at this first outing, The Stars and Stripes Forever's first publication commanded no more attention in terms of sales than most other Sousa marches of the period. Once the band score was completed on April 26, 1897, Sousa may have tried out The Stars and Stripes Forever on a couple of undocumented occasions before its acknowledged premiere, which took place at a Sousa Band concert held in Philadelphia on May 14, 1897. Gilmore, "Here's to the Stars and Stripes forever!" Sousa's march took its title from a favored toast once often proffered by Sousa's late mentor, legendary bandmaster Patrick S.
As he hurriedly made his way back towards America aboard ship, Sousa paced up and down the deck, his mind burning with The Stars and Stripes Forever, born of his impatience to get back home. By his own account, Sousa had been in Europe when the news reached him that his business manager had died in New York. On the morning of Christmas Day, 1896, American "March King" John Philip Sousa wrote his most enduring masterwork, The Stars and Stripes Forever, in his New York hotel room in a couple of hours.