This Day in History: The origins of the Battle Hymn of the Republic

TaraRoss.com ^ | November 18, 2017 | Tara Ross

[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:

• Florence Howe Hall, The Story of the Battle Hymn of the Republic (1916) (modern reprint can be found HERE)
• John D. Wright, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Civil War Era Biographies (2013)
• John Stauffer & Benjamin Soskis, The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On (2013)
• Julia Ward Howe, Reminiscences: 1819-1899 (1899) (modern reprint can be found HERE)
• Robert R. Mathisen, The Routledge Sourcebook of Religion and the American Civil War: A History in Documents (2014)

[DoodleDawg]

Well people have been repeating that assertion for 156 years, so modern people can be forgiven for accepting it as true.

Maybe it's because they are just quoting the men from 156 years ago that said it was about slavery?

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.

And yet 156 years ago the South thought it was necessary to rebel in order to protect it from perceived threats. Go figure.

To put it differently, what were they going to get by leaving the Union that they didn't already have?

Protect slavery to an extent that it wasn't protected under the U.S. Constitution. For example, ensuring that slavery could not be outlawed in any state. Also guaranteeing that slavery would expand to any territories that the Confederacy which was not a given in the U.S. with the Republicans plan to challenge the horrendous Scott decision.

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."

It was in the Constitution. Article I, Section 8: "To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.."

The accusation that they left the Union to keep something they already had is just nonsense. It is silly on the face of it.

Tell that to the Southern leaders of the time:

"Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it." - Lawrence Keitt

"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865

"A stand must be made for African slavery or it is forever lost." [William Grimball to Elizabeth Grimball, Nov. 20, 1860, James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades:

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession

SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention

[DoodleDawg]

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.

And yet trade was not deterred. Ships kept entering and leaving Charleston right up until the time the Confederacy started the war.

Have you never heard of the "Sword of Damocles"? Same principle.

Only if you're looking for an excuse to start a war. Which the Confederacy was.

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.

So did the Southern newspapers.

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

I've read it. It says:

Should the authorities at Charleston, however, refuse to permit or attempt to prevent the vessel or vessels having supplies on board from entering the harbor, or from peaceably proceeding to Fort Sumter, you will protect the transports or boats of the expedition in the object of their mission-disposing of your force in such manner as to open the way for their ingress and afford, so far as practicable, security to the men and boats, and repelling by force, if necessary, all obstructions towards provisioning the fort and re-enforcing it

The Confederates saw it thusly: From Mr. Toombs, Secretary of State, CSA, April 24, 1861:

"[They] received the most positive assurances from Mr. Seward that the policy of his government was peace; that Fort Sumter would be evacuated immediately; that Fort Pickens would soon be abandoned; that no measure was contemplated “to change the existing status of things prejudicially to the Confederate States;” and that, if any change were resolved upon, due notice would be given to the Commissioners.

Incredible as it may seem, it is nevertheless perfectly true that while the Government of the United States was thus addressing the Confederate States with words of conciliation and promises of peace, a large naval and military expedition was being fitted out by its order for the purpose of invading our soil and imposing on us an authority which we have forever repudiated, and which it was well known we would resist to the last extremity.

Having knowledge that a large fleet was expected hourly to arrive at Charleston harbor with orders to force an entrance and attempt to victual and reinforce the fortress, and that the troops of the Confederate States would be thus exposed to a double attack, General Beauregard had no alternative left but to dislodge the enemy and take possession of the fort, and thus command absolutely all the approaches to the port of Charleston, so that the entrance of a hostile fleet would be almost impossible.”

.

.

. General Scott had a different understanding of what was going on than members of the cabinet did. The fog of war.

If you don't want people to mistake a resupply mission for a reinforcement mission, you should leave behind the several gunboats and armed riflemen.

[DoodleDawg]

You know very well the Southern states would have never voted for those amendments absent coercion.

Thus my contention that the idea that the rebellion could have been avoided merely by passing an amendment outlawing slavery was idiotic. As I told jeffersondem.

[DoodleDawg]

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.

And yet you do while ignoring all the evidence that had the South allowed Fort Sumter to be resupplied then reinforcements would not have been landed.

[DiogenesLamp]

You are a true Diogenes: you’ve shined light and exposed dishonest men.

I do not believe these people are dishonest, I believe they have only been taught certain things, and that they have a few blind spots and biases in their understanding of the relevant history. They want to believe what they were taught is correct, because the alternative is very unsettling. I used to believe as did they, and it took me a long time to realize what I had been told didn't make any sense. But thank you for the compliment.

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.

It was this map that finally convinced me that something is really wrong with what we were taught. I already knew that the South was producing 3/4ths of the export value from the United States in 1860. This map showed me where the money was going.

Here are the numbers that show who was earning the export income.

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.

I think it is the coasts that want to secede, the rural counties of California would probably wish to remain as part of the United States. What we have in California is not entirely unlike what was occurring in the South in 1860. Different culture and different economic interests than the rest of the nation.

I'm okay with California leaving, provided we get assurances of necessary defense arrangements for the Pacific, and provided they pay their share of the bills they've ran up by their votes in the Congress for all these years.

[rockrr]

It exactly comports with the facts of Civil War 101 (which is, obviously, why they call it Civil War 101). It doesn’t come as a surprise that DoodleDawg gets it as DoodleDawg is a rational person. I’m shocked that you get it though.

I’m not shocked that it escaped the fire-eaters - but I still reserve some room for disappointment. They should have seen that Lincoln would stay true to his word. They should have bucked up and exhausted every avenue and every recourse before resorting to insurrection and war.

But they didn’t. They chose the easy way out.

Painfully easy...

[DiogenesLamp]

And it shows the Deep State was already in high gear back in 1860. And Abraham Lincoln was really a 19th century Mitch McConnell.

I thought you might be interested in seeing this.

“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood… It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.” Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864

[jeffersondem]

“I'm not trying to exaggerate the role of slavery, simply to prevent our partisan pro-Confederates from denying that it was important, to both sides”

Of course slavery was important. That is why New York voted to include slavery in the US constitution. As did New Jersey. And New Hampshire. And Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and Delaware, and Maryland.

Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia also voted to enshrine slavery into the US constitution.

A student has only to read the great northern patriot Daniel Webster to understand slavery was still an important issue in the 1850’s, long after northern accountants advised manufacturing owners of the advantages of low-wage sweat shops and fully-stocked industrial scale ghettos.

Said Webster:

“If the South were to violate any part of the Constitution intentionally and systematically, and persist in so doing, year after year, and no remedy could be had, would the North be any longer bound by the rest of it? And if the North were deliberately, habitually, and of fixed purpose to disregard one part of it, would the South be bound any longer to observe its other obligations?

“I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that if the Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side.”

Webster and others were successful in strengthening federal law to enforce Article IV, Section 2 but the law, as before, was widely violated in the North.

After John Brown's murder raid, northern politicians essentially set up sanctuary states to harbor terrorists.

For some reason, the South did not want terrorists attacking them from sanctuary states so they attempted to separate from the convenant-breaking states as Webster had feared. Then Lincoln did what he did resulting in well over 600,000 deaths. Lincoln never attempted to amend the constitution to end slavery peacefully before the war.

[DiogenesLamp]

Protect slavery to an extent that it wasn't protected under the U.S. Constitution. For example, ensuring that slavery could not be outlawed in any state.

My reading of Article IV, section 2 causes me to believe that it could already not be outlawed in any state. The Supreme Court also verified this interpretation in the Dred Scot case.

The constitution is quite clear on the matter. It says no matter what the law is in any state, you are required to return servants back to the person for whom their labor is due according to the laws of any state.

If a slaveowner wants to settle in Massachusetts, how can you stop him from bringing his slaves which are held by the laws of the state he is from? How do you get around that constitutional stipulation that they must be returned to him?

It's an ugly deal for states that didn't want slavery, but the problem is, they signed onto that deal.

Also guaranteeing that slavery would expand to any territories that the Confederacy which was not a given in the U.S. with the Republicans plan to challenge the horrendous Scott decision.

The Scott decision was a factually accurate interpretation of the constitutional law from 1787. Liberals had been finessing the reality of that law, and it came as quite a shock to them when the Supreme Court stated what was plainly true of legislative intent when Article IV was written.

It was in the Constitution. Article I, Section 8: "To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.."

I quoted Supreme Court Chief Justice (and Northerner) Salmon P. Chase earlier in the thread where he made it clear that the court would have ruled against Lincoln had he attempted to bring any of these charges against the leadership of the Confederacy.

Lincoln's own adage applies here. "Just because you call a tail a "leg", doesn't make it so." (Just because you call it "rebellion" doesn't make it so.)

[x]

More sophistry from pseudo-Diogenes.

A government that wasn't 100% committed to slavery could do things to weaken the institution. For one thing, it could keep slavery out of the territories, taking the side of anti-slavery forces. It could start admitting new free states.

It could also repeal or stop enforcing fugitive slave laws. It could abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. It could seat judges who would overturn Dred Scott. Eventually, it could vote a system of voluntary compensated emancipation that might begin to unravel the slave system.

But saying that the government couldn't abolish slavery doesn't refute the fact that Southerners feared that Lincoln's election meant the eventual end of slavery. It didn't have to be rational. It was emotional. And that was what many Southerners felt at the time. Saying that it wasn't likely to happen doesn't change how people felt at a very anxious and fearful time.

You are just applying your own a priori assumptions to history and making conclusions on that basis. You have to look up how people actually thought at the time. Try reading DeBow's Review. Here's an article I picked out more or less at random from an 1860 issue: "The Issues of 1860." The article just gets crazier and crazier as you go along. When you think you've seen it all, it dives deeper into nonsense and madness. But that was how a lot of people thought at the time.

A South Carolina state legislature drew on this article in his speech: "THE DOOM OF SLAVERY IN THE UNION: ITS SAFETY OUT OF IT. There was a kind of domino theory at work here. If Kansas goes, so does Missouri, so does the Indian Territory, and so eventually do Arkansas and Texas. That may be irrational, but it's exactly how many secessionists thought. In their own words. It's not some idea of my own that I've imposed on them the way that you like to do.

[jeffersondem]

“But it’s still a legitimate question, was the U.S. the aggressor in World War II because they invaded Germany?”

It sounds like this “legitimate question” may have been troubling you. The answer is no.

[DoodleDawg]

It sounds like this “legitimate question” may have been troubling you. The answer is no.

Why not?

[DiogenesLamp]

And yet trade was not deterred. Ships kept entering and leaving Charleston right up until the time the Confederacy started the war.

And you happen to know somehow that this was exactly the same number that would have done so had there been no Federal Troops with cannons overlooking the entrance?

You don't think it was a slightly uneasy situation for ships entering the harbor and not knowing what might happen?

Only if you're looking for an excuse to start a war. Which the Confederacy was.

The Confederacy could have attacked the US at dozens of places other than Ft. Sumter. They had no desire to do so because nobody was giving them any trouble anywhere else.

The Confederacy did not need a war. All they wanted was to trade with Europe without 40% or more of their money ending up in Washington DC and New York. Lincoln needed the war, otherwise the North would have been devastated by the collapse of their manufacturing and shipping.

One had a serious financial motive to start a war. The other did not.

So did the Southern newspapers.

If you can find some Southern Newspapers calling for war against the North prior to Lincoln sending those ships to Charleston, feel free to post this information. I will make note of it.

[DiogenesLamp]

Thus my contention that the idea that the rebellion could have been avoided merely by passing an amendment outlawing slavery was idiotic. As I told jeffersondem.

I think his point was that the means used to abolish it went against the constitution, not along with it.

Extra-legal is how it was done.

[DiogenesLamp]

And yet you do while ignoring all the evidence that had the South allowed Fort Sumter to be resupplied then reinforcements would not have been landed.

One more day and Anderson would have left. Why would they want to throw that away? Gone would be the Federal threat to their trade, all they needed was one more day.

And then the warships showed up, confirming their worst fears that Lincoln had no intention of giving the fort up peaceably, despite Seward's assurances to them.

Lie to them, mislead them, then send troops and gunboats with orders to attack them?

[jeffersondem]

“A government that wasn’t 100% committed to slavery could do things to weaken the institution. . . It could also repeal or stop enforcing fugitive slave laws.”

Not legally.

But in fact, that is exactly what the northern states did. Daniel Webster talked at length about the very thing:

“If the South were to violate any part of the Constitution intentionally and systematically, and persist in so doing, year after year, and no remedy could be had, would the North be any longer bound by the rest of it? And if the North were deliberately, habitually, and of fixed purpose to disregard one part of it, would the South be bound any longer to observe its other obligations?

“I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that if the Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side.”

Of course, Lincoln and his backers had a plan to deal with those who didn’t want to be bound to a broken compact. Kill ‘em.

[DoodleDawg]

My reading of Article IV, section 2 causes me to believe that it could already not be outlawed in any state. The Supreme Court also verified this interpretation in the Dred Scot case.

Article IV, Section 3 says that Congress can make "all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States..." Which means they can outlaw slavery in the territories. As for Article IV, Section 2 slaves fleeing to non-slave states might be returned but moving with your slaves to a non-slave state would mean your slaves were emancipated. Under the Confederate constitution people could move to any state with their slaves and keep them.

If a slaveowner wants to settle in Massachusetts, how can you stop him from bringing his slaves which are held by the laws of the state he is from? How do you get around that constitutional stipulation that they must be returned to him?

If slavery is illegal in the state then you cannot move there with your slaves. Not hard at all to understand.

The Scott decision was a factually accurate interpretation of the constitutional law from 1787.

Crap.

I quoted Supreme Court Chief Justice (and Northerner) Salmon P. Chase earlier in the thread where he made it clear that the court would have ruled against Lincoln had he attempted to bring any of these charges against the leadership of the Confederacy.

And yet when the time came Chief Justice Chase did not dismiss the charges against Davis on the grounds that his actions were not illegal. He had to resort to a loophole using the 5th Amendment and double jeopardy.

[DoodleDawg]

I think his point was that the means used to abolish it went against the constitution, not along with it.

That's not what he said.

[x]

What is so hard to understand? The plan was to send a few ships to reprovision the fort, with others still at sea standing by in reserve in case of trouble.

It's likely that the CSA and the locals were acting on rumors rather than gathering reliable intelligence or waiting until the situation cleared up.

Toombsy was right when he counseled against attacking the fort -- if he in fact did -- and wrong when he tried to justify it.

But reading the document makes me wonder if he wasn't lying when he said afterwards that he objected to the attack at the time.