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:
You are nothing if not a broken record. You routinely post this turd as if anyone here makes such a claim - no one does. It is entirely a red herring of your creation.
“You routinely post this turd as if anyone here makes such a claim - no one does. It is entirely a red herring of your creation.”
Perhaps you missed post 33 on this very thread: “When you pro-Confederates pretend the Civil War “was not about slavery”, by that you mean neither side fought to defend or defeat slavery, right? This song puts the lie to your claims.”
I hate to be persistent, but critic answers critic.
Jeebus but you are slow!
It wasn’t “all about slavery” - except to the southern slavers who started a war over it.
Why are you suddenly surprised to learn that?
And lacking the votes, northern states did the next best thing - took up an army to overthrow the constitution’s slavery provisions, often popularized “as He died to make men holy let us die to make men free.”
No, they took up an army to fight the war that the South forced upon them.
Northern states taking up an army to overthrow the US constitution had an added benefit - the opportunity to destroy - kill you might say - economic and political rivals in the south.
How exactly did they "overthrow the U.S. Constitution"?
There is no need for you to introduce personal rancor. Remember, I have supported (in my post 40) one of your core contentions:
"If what you say is true - and you make a fair case - then we can dismiss the notion that the north was fighting for some high moral cause like “freeing the slaves.” "
You invite it.
When you say “No”, do you mean the North did not fight to “free the slaves.?”
The song, Battle Hymn of the Republic, which is the topic of this thread, states otherwise. The song gives one clear reason for the war: “As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free.” The song actually says little about using federal ports to collect import taxes.
Many millions of people then and now have sung the song vigorously believing the valorous union army was fighting to "free the slaves." If that is not correct, then we can dismiss the notion the North fought for some high moral purposed like ending slavery.
Of course, if the North was fighting because it was in the North's economic and political best self-interest, then, arguably, that was a high moral cause worth killing 600,000 people.
That's correct. I don't know too many people with any knowledge about the Civil War who believe the North fought to end slavery.
The song, Battle Hymn of the Republic, which is the topic of this thread, states otherwise.
And the "Bonnie Blue Flag" says the South was fighting for liberty. Songs on both sides were meant rally people and were not necessarily statements of national policy.
If that is not correct, then we can dismiss the notion the North fought for some high moral purposed like ending slavery.
As a Confederate supporter I can understand how you could see slavery as the only high moral purpose worth fighting over. But you would be wrong. There were others.
Of course, if the North was fighting because it was in the North's economic and political best self-interest, then, arguably, that was a high moral cause worth killing 600,000 people.
And the Confederacy fought to protect slavery. Is that high moral cause worth 600,000 lives?
“And the Confederacy fought to protect slavery.”
If the Confederacy was fighting for slavery, who was fighting against slavery?
They did some “trampling out” in the 1861-65 era killing Christians like Pat Cleburne and States Rights Gist.
"States Rights Gist"? How Christian could his family have been when they named their son after a secular political movement?
I think I went to school with his great-grandson, Unilateral Secession Gist.
Anyway, Gist and Cleburne were killed in battle, along with many thousands of others who were equally religious in the war that Davis and the secessionists started.
There's a parallel between the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in the US and "Jerusalem" in the UK. Both songs make use of religious imagery and have been proposed as national anthems, but some in the clergy have found them insufficiently orthodox and too focused on this world, rather than the afterlife.
>Anyway, Gist and Cleburne were killed in battle, along with many thousands of others who were equally religious in the war that Davis and the secessionists started.
I forget, who invaded who?
Wars start -- some people start them -- and then countries respond. They don't hold back and say, "Maybe they didn't mean it. Maybe if we do nothing it will all stop."
The US fights back against countries that fight us. The whole Confederate thing of saying "We aren't Americans. We aren't the US. We don't want to be part of your country. ... Wait a minute. Why are you doing this? We're Americans just like you," doesn't work.
When the insurrectionists illegally seized federal properties and threatened United States troops they committed acts of war against the United States.
>When the insurrectionists illegally seized federal properties and threatened United States troops they committed acts of war against the United States.
And yet the first act of the war was moving warships and troops from the north into a fort in the south to threaten the harbor of a Southern city. The North made the first hostile act, Linlcon very good propaganda notwithstanding. There’s a reason it’s called the war of Northern aggression.
There’s a reason it’s called the war of Northern aggression.
And an even better one why they it’s called the war of Southern Treachery.
> And an even better one why they it’s called the war of Southern Treachery.
Really? Who did the South betray? The Revolution war put forward the principle forth people can decide to break the bonds of with their parent nation anytime. In the war of 1820 and the Mexican America war, the south took the brunt of the casualties and made up the majority of the military. If there’s any part of the nation that betrayed the country it was New England who refused to support the war of 1812 and threated to succeed during the war.
The United States of America
Nobody specifically. The end of slavery was a fortunate offshoot of the war but never the reason why the Union was fighting.
>> Really? Who did the South betray?
>The United States of America
Did the United States of America betray Great Britan?
No. Great Britain betrayed the colonists.
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