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:
I'm saying that if you thought I was wrong, why did you think that would justify you doing it?
And the Confederacy initiated the conflict by firing on Sumter.
Once Lincoln sent the fleet to attack them. Even Major Anderson admitted this was the trigger for the war. The first act of war was the sending of that fleet with orders to attack them. Lincoln struck first, but the Confederates beat him to the punch after he had already thrown his first punch.
I honestly don't care one way or the other what you believe, but I will point out that my reply was in response to jeffersondem's rather ludicrous suggestion that the whole conflict could have been avoided by amending the Constitution to end slavery.
Which one of your opinions should I believe?
When you take things out of context then it's hard to understand why you believe what you believe.
I have you at a disadvantage. I actually saw the notes on the debate about the constitutional protection for slavery. In the discussion, they use the word "slave", repeatedly.
The truly deciding factor was the sending of that war fleet to attack the Confederates. As I mentioned, Anderson himself said this would start the war.
They already knew why those ships were there, and what they represented. They represented a forthcoming attack, according to the orders which had been sent to the Confederates.
Had there been no ships with attack orders, there would have been no attack against Sumter.
Jeffersondem was criticizing. I was just following precedent.
Once Lincoln sent the fleet to attack them. Even Major Anderson admitted this was the trigger for the war. The first act of war was the sending of that fleet with orders to attack them. Lincoln struck first, but the Confederates beat him to the punch after he had already thrown his first punch.
The act that started the war was bombarding the fort into surrender. No hostile acts had been made by Anderson or the North prior to that. Had Lincoln been allowed to resupply the fort then no hostile acts by Anderson and the North would have been committed after that. The status quo would remain. Why wasn't that enough for the South?
I'm still chuckling over that one!
So what do you think Article IV, section 2 is about?
It's the Privileges and Immunities clause. Do you not know the difference between a reference and an enshrinement?
Why do you suppose that they didn't follow through and actually enshrine that reference by standing tall and identifying the Peculiar Institution by name?
Well people have been repeating that assertion for 156 years, so modern people can be forgiven for accepting it as true. I keep pointing out that the Southern States already had slavery, and they had had it for the "four score and seven years" that the nation had existed, and as you yourself have pointed out, it was almost impossible for slavery to be abolished through a constitutional amendment.
So if the Southern states already had it, how was it a cause for them to leave? Were they going to get even more of it by leaving?
To put it differently, what were they going to get by leaving the Union that they didn't already have?
The motivation for the North was always preservation of the Union.
And why would they have a right to "preserve" a Union that was created by breaking with a previous Union? One that lasted far longer than "four score and seven years."
And a considerable percentage of Confederacy supporters deny the Southern actions were motivated by slavery - including most of the ones around here.
Again, did they not already have slavery? How does leaving the Union give them more slavery? Your claim makes no sense. Why would anyone leave a Union because of slavery when that Union allowed slavery? The five Union slave states didn't leave. Did the Union try to take away their slavery?
The accusation that they left the Union to keep something they already had is just nonsense. It is silly on the face of it.
Propaganda is not always correct.
The people who have been spreading it for 156 years, don't care that it's not correct. It justifies what their side did, and so far as they are concerned, that is all that matters. They get to believe in their own minds that their side was the "good guys", and so they would rather believe this than the truth.
The mere presence of a presumably hostile force at the entrance to one of your major ports is itself a deterrent of trade. Nobody wants to be the first to learn that they may be fired upon by a change in policy that occurred while they were crossing the Atlantic.
Have you never heard of the "Sword of Damocles"? Same principle.
Northern newspapers did not run the country.
They influenced the people, and who can say that what is editorial opinion one day is not going to be National policy the next? Certainly the Chicago Newspapers got the war for which they called.
This is Civil War 101 stuff.
The fire-eaters worked themselves up into a frenzy telling each other that Lincoln would take slavery away from them. That is why they up n skedaddled. Or so they told us.
Never the less it was your honest assessment of the "free will" of the states absent coercion. You voiced it before you realized it supported my point that the 13th and 14th amendments were coerced by Washington DC.
You know very well the Southern states would have never voted for those amendments absent coercion.
If true it doesn't exactly speak all that well of them, does it?
I feel as if it is a waste of my time to look up and post the salient communications for your benefit, because I know from past history you will simply pretend I didn't do it, and then you will ask this same question, or variation thereof, again and again.
- Adjutant-General.HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, Washington, D. C., April 4, 1861.
Lieutenant Colonel HENRY L. SCOTT, A. D. C., New York:
SIR: This letter will be landed to you by Captain G. V. Fox, ex-officer of the Navy, and a gentleman of high standing, as well as possessed of extraordinary nautical ability. He is charged by high authority here with the command of an expedition, under cover of certain ships of war, whose object is to re-enforce Fort Sumter.
To embark with Captain Fox you will cause a detachment of recruits, say about two hundred, to be immediately organized at Fort Columbus, with a competent number of officers, arms, ammunition, and subsistence. A large surplus of the latter-indeed, as great as the vessels of the expedition can take-with other necessaries, will be needed for the augmented garrison of Fort Sumter.
The subsistence and other supplies should be assorted like those which were provided by you and Captain Ward of the Navy for a former expedition. Consult Captain Fox and Major Eaton on the subject, and give all necessary orders in my name to fit out the expedition, except that the hiring of vessels will be left to others.
Some fuel must be shipped. Oil, artillery implements, fuses, cordage, slow-march, mechanical levers, and gins, &c., should also be put on board.
Consult, also, if necessary, confidentially, Colonel Tompkins and Major Thornton.
Respectfully, yours,
WINFIELD SCOTT.
https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/official-records/001/0236
BroJoeK, I will point out to you that the Pickens letter was not sent until two days later. Reinforcement was already the plan before the Pickens letter went out.
Doing that font thing only serves to illustrate what an idiot you are.
Read the orders sent by Secretary of the Navy Welles and Secretary of War Cameron. They give a different picture of what the expedition was ordered to do. General Scott had a different understanding of what was going on than members of the cabinet did. The fog of war.
You are a true Diogenes: you’ve shined light and exposed dishonest men.
What you say makes a lot of sense and you’ve convinced me. The blockade makes sense as a way to block cotton and other goods going to Europe.
Makes more sense than ending slavery as the issue. You win on the “follow the money” rule.
BTW, I have no problem letting California set up its own nation, but I expect them to build a high wall to keep citizens out of the United States without visas and other immigration control. And if they don’t control their own border with Mexico, we can set up a travel ban.
Even DoodleDawg knows that possibility was not even remotely true.
I've done the math. If the 11 states that became the Confederacy all voted to keep slavery, it would take 44 states in the Union for them to be outvoted by the remainder. (Wasn't possible till 1896) If the Union slave states also voted against abolishing slavery, it would have taken a Union with 60 states to outvote the slave states.
On top of that, Lincoln said repeatedly that he would not attempt to do anything about slavery, and that he actually didn't have the power to do anything about it even if he wanted to.
So it sounds like "Civil War 101" is not at all compatible with the demonstrable facts of that time period.
Or so they told us.
I have read many opinions to the effect that this was indeed what they said, but it was intended as subterfuge for their real reasons, which was economic independence.
At least this is what one Northern newspaper believed.
The Boston Transcript, March 18, 1861:
"the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports..."
They were people of their time and place, and what they were taught to believe did not seem wrong to them. I would like to believe that I would not have gone along with the crowd, but I cannot honestly say I would have had I been raised to believe that what they did was acceptable.
Never the less, they joined the Union with the premise that their peculiar institution would continue, and this position represents their free will choice on the matter. What the Federals did to force passage of the 13th and 14th amendment does not.
:)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.