"THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC."

"THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC." Poet Julia Ward Howe wrote the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," the great Civil War song that became an American anthem of righteousness and power, in November of 1861. Composed in a flash of inspiration to the tune of the marching song "John Brown's Body," the poem was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. However, "Battle Hymn" was popularized as a song by Union chaplain Charles Cardwell McCabe, who often included it in his lectures and sang it on important occasions. The hymn was also a favorite of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, and remains a staple of American patriotic and religious music.

In 1862, Howe journeyed to Washington, D.C., in company of her abolitionist husband, Samuel Gridley Howe. Although slow to embrace abolitionism, Howe was caught up in the drama of John Brown's martyrdom for his failed attack on Harpers Ferry. Her powerful Biblical imagery linking the Old Testament prophesy of vengeance and redemption ("I have trodden the wine press alone … and trampled them in my wrath … For the day of vengeance was in my heart, / and my year of redemption has come." [Isaiah 63:1–6]) with God's mercy and Christ's sacrifice framed the Civil War as a Christian crusade. The music to "John Brown's Body" and "Battle Hymn" is based on an old Methodist hymn.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grant, Mary H. Private Woman, Public Person: An Account of the Life of Julia Ward Howe from 1819 to 1868. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1994.

Ream, Debbie Williams. "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory." American History Illustrated 27 (January/February 1973): 60–64. Abstract.

Ross, William E. "The Singing Chaplain: Bishop Charles Card-well McCabe and the Popularization of the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic.'" Methodist History 29, no 1 (1989):22–32. Abstract, America: History and Life.

Williams, Gary. Hungry Heart: The Literary Emergence of Julia Ward Howe. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.