The Battle Hymn of the Republic
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"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a patriotic anthem, written by Julia Ward Howe, that was made popular during the American Civil War. The original words and music were written in 1853 by South Carolinian William Steffe. It was alternately called "Canaan's Happy Shore" or "Brothers, Will You Meet Me?" and was sung as a campfire spiritual. The catchy tune spread across the country, taking on many sets of new lyrics (most of them vulgar).
A man from Vermont named Thomas Bishop joined the Massachusetts Infantry before the outbreak of war, and wrote a popular set of lyrics titled "John Brown's Body" (after the radical abolitionist), which became one of his unit's walking songs. Bishop's battalion was dispatched to Washington, D.C., in 1862. Returning from a public review of the troops, Julia Ward Howe sang with them. Her companion, the Reverend James Clarke suggested to Howe that she write new words for the fighting men's song, and the current version of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was born.[link]
However, according to writer Irwin Silber (who has written a book about Civil War folksongs) the song Mrs. Howe heard was not about John Brown the abolitionist, but a Scotsman, also named John Brown who was a member of the 12th Massachusetts Regiment. An article by writer Mark Steyn provides some background behind the story. Apparently, the men of John Brown's unit had made up a song poking fun at him. It was this song they sang when Mrs. Howe passed by. Mrs. Howe, and everyone else who heard it, assumed (not unreasonably) that song was about John Brown the abolitionist.
Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was first published on the front page of The Atlantic Monthly of February 1862. The sixth verse written by Howe, which is less commonly sung, was not published at that time.
Contents
Influence on later culture
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated" (1901) was Mark Twain's mocking parody of the lyrics, from the "point of view" of an American industrialist inspired by then-recent events of the Spanish and Philippine Wars. The melody of the song is the basis for the popular union song "Solidarity Forever", written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915. Paratroopers during World War II made up another variation, "Gory, Gory". In 1960 the Mormon Tabernacle Choir won the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus at that year's awards ceremony with a recording that replaced the line "let us die to make men free" with the more cheery "let us live to make men free", a variation that has since caught on to some extent. In 1994 in occasion of the 1994 FIFA World Cup in the United States Daryl Hall with a choral group The Sound of Blackness using the tone of the anthem sang the official song of the event "Gloryland".Score
- One version of the melody, in C major, begins as below. This is an example of the mediant-octave modal frame.
Lyrics
- 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.
- :(Chorus)
- Glory, glory, hallelujah!
- Glory, glory, hallelujah!
- Glory, glory, hallelujah!
- His truth is marching on
- I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
- They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
- I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
- His day is marching on.
- :Chorus
- I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
- "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
- Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
- Since God is marching on."
- :Chorus
- He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
- He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
- Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
- Our God is marching on.
- :Chorus
- In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
- With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
- As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
- While God is marching on.
- :Chorus
- He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
- He is wisdom to the mighty, He is succour to the brave,
- So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
- Our God is marching on.
- :Chorus
Notes
- ↑ The clause "let us die to make men free" is the most explicit reference to the Union soldiers and the fight to end slavery. In later years, when this song was sung in a non-military environment, this line was sometimes changed to "let us live to make men free".
- ↑ The sixth verse is often omitted. Also, a common variant changes "soul of Time" to "soul of wrong", and "succour" to "honor".]
Trivia
- The Battle Hymn was played at the funeral of Robert Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike are two novels that take their titles from the hymn.
- The tune of the song has been used in 42 films to date, the first being Mother Machree in 1928 and the most recent Bowling for Columbine in 2002.
- In the movie The Right Stuff, John Glenn (played by Ed Harris), hums this tune as his space capsule is returning to earth.
- The chorus of the hymn is featured in the song An American Trilogy made famous by Elvis Presley.
- The first line of the hymn is also adopted in These Things Take Time by The Smiths: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the sacred wunderkind / you took me behind a dis-used railway line".
- The first verse and chorus of the hymn can be heard in the background of In the Name of God, a song from Dream Theater's seventh album, Train of Thought.
- The Christian Metal band Stryper recorded a heavy metal version of the hymn for their 1985 debut album Soldiers Under Command. Since then, has been used as the intro to all their concerts.
- Three hours before each University of Georgia football game (when the gates open) a lone trumpeter stands in the South Deck of Sanford Stadium and plays the first phrase. The UGA band also plays the entire song after home victories.
- At the end of each Ole Miss sporting event, the band plays a song entitled "From Dixie With Love", which combines the southern tune "Dixie" with the Battle Hymn. Ole Miss fans sing verses from "Dixie" as well as "The South will rise again" in place of "His truth is marching on" from the hymn.
- The Battle Hymm is played by the University of Minnesota Marching band during the pregame show of Minnesota Golden Gopher football games. It is also played by the pep band at the end of a hockey series sweep. [link]
- The Japanese electronics retailer Yodobashi Camera uses the melody of the song in their in-store advertising jingle. Of course the lyrics are in Japanese and are about buying cameras and electronics.
- In Turkey, the Hymn is sung as a Scout camp song with Turkish lyrics by both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.
- Jewish-American comedian and parody artist Allan Sherman recorded a parody of this on his 1962 album My Son, The Folk Singer. The song, entitled "The Ballad of Harry Lewis", was about a cloth cutter (Harry Lewis) in the garment district of New York, who worked for one Irving Roth. A choice line from the parody: "He was trampling through the warehouse,/Where the drapes of Roth are stored."
- Schoolchildren all over the United States have sung an irreverent variation of the song beginning "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school...".
- Another wanton parody is a racist rendition recorded by Johnny Rebel and featured in the movie American History X, sung by Ethan Suplee, as well as on South Park.
- Yet another parody, "Hang Jeff Davis to a Sour Apple Tree/Down went McKinsey to the bottom of the sea", has now become one of the official songs of the University of Pennsylvania.
- William R. Forstchen's The Lost Regiment science fiction book series features four books whose titles are taken from lyrics from the song (Terrible Swift Sword, Fateful Lightning, Battle Hymn and Never Sound Retreat).
- British cult band Half Man Half Biscuit (a favorite of legendary DJ John Peel) recorded a track called "Vatican Broadside", which was sung to the melody of the song but with lyrics including the lines "The singer out of Slipknot went to Rome to see the Pope" "..and the Pope said to his aide:" and the chorus: "who the f***in 'ell is Slipknot?"
- In the 1960s absurdist classic The Principia Discordia, the tune is renamed The Battle Hymn of the Eristocracy, with new lyrics that include the line "Grand and Gory Ol' Discordja" as part of the chorus.
- In the 1989 film UHF, after Stanley Spadowski gives the inspirational speech, "Life is like a mop. Sometimes life gets full of dirt and crud and bugs and hairballs and you gotta clean it out. You gotta stick it in here and rinse it off and start all over again. And sometimes life sticks to the floor so much that a mop, a mop, it's not good enough. You gotta get down there with like a toothbrush, you know, and you gotta really scrub 'cause you gotta get it off. But if that doesn't work, you can't give up. You gotta stand right up. You gotta run to a window and say, 'These floors are dirty as hell, and I'm not gonna take it any more!'" this song plays in the background.
- "Blood on the Risers", a World War II paratrooper song, had its melody taken from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".
Further reading
- Jackson, Popular Songs of Nineteenth-Century America, note on "Battle Hymn of the Republic", p.263-4.
- Scholes, Percy A. (1955). "John Brown's Body", The Oxford Companion of Music. Ninth edition. Londong: Oxford University Press.
External links
- [1917 Sheet Music] at Duke University as part of the American Memory collection of the Library of Congress
- [Easybyte] - free easy piano arrangement of The Battle Hymn of the Republic
- [Julia Ward Howe] by LAURA E. RICHARDS AND MAUD HOWE ELLIOTT
- [New England Music Archive]
| Patriotic music of the United States |
|
|---|---|
| "America the Beautiful" | "Ballad of the Green Berets" | "Battle Cry of Freedom" | "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" | "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean" | "For The Dear Old Flag, I Die" | "God Bless America" | "God Bless the USA" | "Hail Columbia" | "Hail to the Chief" | "The Liberty Bell" | "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" | "Over There" | "The Stars and Stripes Forever" | "The Star-Spangled Banner" | "There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere" | "This is My Country" | "This Land Is Your Land" | "Yankee Doodle" | "The Yankee Doodle Boy" | "You're a Grand Old Flag" | "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" | |
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