Posted on 11/18/2017 6:36:43 AM PST by iowamark
On or around this day in 1861, Julia Ward Howe is inspired to write the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Did you know that this much-loved patriotic song has its roots in the Civil War years?
Julia was the daughter of a Wall Street broker and a poet. She was well-educated and was able to speak fluently in several languages. Like her mother, she loved to write. She also became very interested in the abolitionist and suffragette causes.
Samuel Howe was progressive in many ways, but he wasn’t too keen on expanding women’s rights. He thought Julia’s place was in the home, performing domestic duties. Interesting, since he proceeded to lose her inheritance by making bad investments.
One has to wonder if she could have managed her own inheritance a bit better?
After a while, Julia got tired of being stifled. She had never really given up writing, but now she published some of her poems anonymously. Samuel wasn’t too happy about that! The matter apparently became so contentious that the two were on the brink of divorce. Samuel especially disliked the fact that Julia’s poems so often seemed to reflect the personal conflicts within their own marriage.
In fact, people figured out that Julia had written the poems. Oops.
Events swung in Julia’s favor in 1861. Julia and Samuel had decided to attend a review of Union trips, along with their minister, James Freeman Clarke. The Union soldiers were singing a tune about the abolitionist John Brown, who had been killed before the Civil War. The lyrics included such lines as: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His soul is marching on!”
Clarke wasn’t too impressed. He suggested to Julia that she try to write more inspirational lyrics for the same melody. Julia proceeded to do exactly that. She later remembered that she “awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, ‘I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.’”
Perhaps you will recognize the lyrics that she wrote that morning.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.”
Julia’s hymn supported the Union army and challenged the Confederate cause. One historian notes that she “identifies the Army of the Potomac with the divine armies that would crush the forces of evil and inaugurate the millennium. . . .”
In February 1862, Julia’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was published in the Atlantic Monthly. The song was a hit and Julia’s fame spread quickly. In the years that followed, she traveled widely, lecturing and writing more than ever. She was President of a few associations, and she later became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Julia’s song began as a morale-booster for Union troops. Today, it has grown beyond that to such an extent that most people do not remember its beginnings.
Primary Sources:
So are you saying that Lincoln himself personally planned, supervised and administered the building of the Capitol dome? In addition to running the country and fighting the Southern rebellion? Talk about being the champ of multi-tasking!
What you are doing here is re-framing the discussion to save face. That is an entirely human response.
Just make a mental note of the outcome and let it inform your comments going forward.
“Read it again - for the first time”
:)
You realize of course that the building of the Capitol Dome - and I assume that's what you are referring to when you say Lincoln built the Capitol and not the entire building itself - was begun in 1854 under Franklin Pierce and by the time Lincoln was inaugurated work had been underway for over five years? And that any slave labor used had likely been contracted long before Lincoln was inaugurated? So your claim that Lincoln himself arranged the slave labor is pretty ridiculous.
“So your claim that Lincoln himself arranged the slave labor is pretty ridiculous.”
That is an interesting comment.
May we see your data on that?
There is no data that supports the claim Lincoln arranged for the slave labor. Can't provide something that doesn't exist.
“So your claim that Lincoln himself arranged the slave labor is pretty ridiculous.”
Can you cite a post in which I claim “Lincoln himself arranged the slave labor?”
OK.
Reply 282 - "I knew the topic of Lincoln using slave labor to help build the US Capitol would come up sooner or later but I didn’t realize you would be the one to bring it up."
Reply 302 - "It looks like your tacit acknowledgment that Lincoln did, in fact, use slave labor to help build the Capitol has settled her hash."
Your posts prove I have not claimed that “Lincoln himself arranged. . .”
I hope that your misstating the facts is unintentional.
"Lincoln used..." If Lincoln used the slaves then he must have arranged for them.
In all honesty I've been having a bit of fun at your poorly-worded attempt at slandering Lincoln. I admit I did go out on a limb a bit by assuming you were referring to the Capitol Dome and not the Capitol itself because surely you knew that the Capitol itself was build 50 years before. But even with that your implication that Lincoln knew slaves were used on the construction still is idiotic. The work began in 1855, long before his inauguration. Were slaves used? Probably. But since work was commissioned long before Lincoln was president and since the work was done under the supervision of the Architect of the Capitol, Thomas Walter, then the Executive was in no way involved in planning, work, contracting, or hiring. Yet you continue to insist that Lincoln ordered slaves be used. Odd.
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James F. Simon is the Martin Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York Law School. He lives with his wife in West Nyack, New York..
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Bernard Christian Steiner (born Guilford, Connecticut, 13 August 1867; died 12 January 1926) was a United States educator, librarian and jurist.
He prepared for college at the academy of Frederick, Maryland, then attended Yale, where he graduated with a A.B. in 1888, and a A.M. in 1890. He graduated from the University of Maryland with degree of LL.B. in 1894.
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H.H. Walker Lewis: He began his career at Piper, Carey and Hall in Baltimore after he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1928.
The native of Hoboken, N.J., was directly descended from Fielding Lewis, the husband of George Washington's sister, Betty.
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So which one of these North Eastern men would you expect to tarnish the legacy of Abraham Lincoln?
All of them, rather than compromise their biography of Taney. Roger Taney was the subject of their work. Deliberately leaving out an important part of his life and career would cast doubt on the rest of their research.
I realize that accuracy is unimportant to you if it gets in the way of your agenda. But you aren't a professional historian and biographer. Accuracy for them is the life's blood of their work. It forms the foundation for their professional reputations. To you it is nothing, to them it is everything. And the shame is that you will never, ever understand that.
I do not believe that. I believe there has been a deliberate propaganda war against the South since before the Civil War even began, and the "group think" of the North East prevents them from even looking at things in an objective manner. If you grow up in that environment, you will simply dismiss anything that does not conform to what you have been told to believe for all of your life.
Paranoia runs deep down south I see.
Not paranoia, and I don't live in the South. I have never lived in the South.
When you kill 750,000 people in a war to stop independence, you have to justify your bloodshed by making the other side look evil. This only works if you refuse to acknowledge the evil you yourself have committed.
Well paranoia appears to run deep wherever you live.
When you kill 750,000 people in a war to stop independence of rebellion, you have to justify your bloodshed by making the other side look evil.
Hence the Confederate Mythology Machine that you seem to depend on.
“If Lincoln used the slaves then he must have arranged for them.”
This statement appears in your post 370.
From where did this statement come?
To be clear, it is not something I have written.
And I don’t think you have written it before. Even by your standards of thinking it does not make sense.
Can you explain?
No, I suppose not.
“No, I suppose not.”
Well, I guess that settled her hash.
If that's what you want to think then go right ahead.
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