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:
It's kind of a hobby.
Your cohort DiogenesLamp used the Hitler analogy early on in this thread so I figured it was fair game.
But it's still a legitimate question, was the U.S. the aggressor in World War II because they invaded Germany? Or was the invasion a direct result of Germany starting the war in the first place?
They would choke at the Christian lyrics.
Ironically, Mrs. Howe was a religious radical and Battle Hymn is detested by "palaeos" and neo-Confederates.
I would doubt that BroJoeK would call himself an expert, any more than I would call myself an expert. I consider myself widely read on the subject but I also freely admit that there are far more learned individuals on this forum than I am. BroJoeK has his beliefs and opinions, and if he truly believes the North fought to end slavery then I would respectfully disagree with him.
Well the attacking side certainly didn't attack because they wanted to defeat slavery. I think the defenders were defending mostly because they were being attacked.
So why was the attacking side attacking? They were attempting to maintain control of that money flow the South Produced.
I believe you have that exactly backwards. In 1860, the South payed 75% of the costs of running the Federal Government, and they employed the vast bulk of the Northern Shipping fleet in carrying their goods to Europe. 200 Million per year was flowing through the New York economy precisely because of the Tariff's and shipping laws instituted in Washington DC.
If the South were permitted to become independent, not only would all this money be lost to New York and Washington DC, the additional revenues achieved by cutting out New York and Washington could have been used to build competing industries in the South.
A Lot of Wealthy and powerful men stood to lose a great deal of current and future revenue if the South was allowed to trade directly with Europe outside of their control.
So my point here is that the North East very badly needed a war with the South precisely because of economic reasons. If they ever allowed the South to have direct economic trade with Europe, many of their industries would have been badly damaged economically.
It needed the economic engine of the South to survive, so forced the South back into the United States of America,
This is incorrect. The "economic engine" of the South was slavery. Once you have eradicated that, you have no "economic engine" in the South that could produce the same profits it did pre-war. This is one of the reasons why the South became mostly impoverished after the war.
What the North did was say "If we can't have that economic engine, we are going to make sure nobody can have it." For the first two years of the war, they were going to keep slavery. It was only after they realized the South would not stop fighting, that they decided to destroy slavery.
Washington and New York originally wanted the slave based money system in the South to continue. They just wanted to make sure the money circulated through their hands. When they saw that the money was going to stop, that's when they decided they had to have a war.
Wrong.
By the time the Union army crossed the Potomac for the First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas, in July 1861, Confederates had already formally declared war (May 6, 1861) and brought war to the Union states or territories of Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia, Oklahoma (Indian Territory) and New Mexico.
By war's end Confederate forces also invaded the Union states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky & Kansas.
And Confederate guerillas operated in Union states like California, Colorado and even Vermont, as well as Unionist regions in Southern states.
So our pro-Confederates' claims that it was all just "northern aggression" are pure bunk.
JohnyBoy post #67: "Which is why it wasn’t a civil war.
A Civil war involves sides trying to take over the central government.
This was a war of secession exactly like the one the 13 colonies fought against Great Britan..."
The dictionary definition of "civil war" is:
jeffersondem post #72: "It is worth remembering that one of the causes for independence that the slave states cited in the Declaration of Independence was that Britain was interfering with slavery in the colonies."
In fact, no such issue is listed in the Declaration of Independence.
Just the opposite: Jefferson's famous deleted paragraph complained first that Brits had forced slavery on all American colonies and now intended to use slaves against the patriots.
Hey Joe, post the article and section of the Constitution making state secession illegal.
DoodleDawg: "I would doubt that BroJoeK would call himself an expert, any more than I would call myself an expert.
I consider myself widely read on the subject.."
Correct.
DoodleDawg: "BroJoeK has his beliefs and opinions, and if he truly believes the North fought to end slavery then I would respectfully disagree with him."
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.
The question is: how important?
The answer is: very important as demonstrated by:
Sure, super-sharp hair-splitting lawyers might claim: "Civil War was not about slavery", but nobody at the time made such arguments.
They all understood intuitively what it was.
Confederates were "the attacking side" and they certainly did intend to defend slavery.
The Union in defending itself also advanced the cause of emancipation, abolition and full citizenship for African-Americans.
Regardless of how much you spin it otherwise, those remain facts of history.
Isn't the usual answer to that question, Texas vs White?
In deciding the merits of the bond issue, the court further held that the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from the United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were "absolutely null".[2]"
The North Attacked first. Both in terms of sending a war fleet to engage the Confederate forces around Sumter, and in the fact of firing the first gun shots at members of the Florida Militia at Fort Pickens.
I saw awhile back where the most definitive and accurate number produced so far places the casualties at 750,000 dead as a direct result of the war.
I've also seen it asserted that an additional 2 million Southerners subsequently died from starvation, disease, and exposure as an indirect consequence of the war.
Article IV, section 2.
"No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."
They were squeamish about using the word "slave", and so they didn't use it. Nonetheless, everyone knew to what Article IV, Section 2 referred.
Additionally, Lincoln said he would support the addition of a 13th amendment that went like this:
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.
Notice again they were squeamish about using the word "slave"?
They had made the South hate them. If they left slavery alone, the South would have used the economic power it gave them to seek further revenge on the North for all the bloodshed. By taking away their slaves, they disarmed a potential economic weapon that could have been used against them. Also by giving the Slaves voting rights while denying them to Southern whites, they acquired more power in the Congress than they would have otherwise been able to acquire.
I used to believe that these things were done for moral and benevolent reasons, but since I have come to look at this conflict as a power struggle between groups of elites, it has cast a very different light on what I had previously believed were humanitarian issues. I now ask myself, does a certain act help or hurt the consolidation of power by certain power blocks?
Usually all the acts concentrate power to the same group of people.
Hamiltonians vs Jeffersonians is the simplest shorthand for the split.
A point I make often. Slavery could not have been legally abolished if the states were allowed to vote on the issue without guns pointed at their heads. Lincoln got around that constitutional challenge by pointing guns at their heads and demanding they vote as they were commanded to vote.
The Union was holding slaves in Fort Sumter? Who knew?
LOL! You never change, do you?
And how did the South force a war upon them? What vital Northern interest did the South threaten?
Did they take up residence in a fortress overlooking New York Harbor from whence they could threaten shipping if they were of a mind to do so?
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