power of thus expressing herself. Colonel Greene must have read in her
face something of the emotion which poured itself out in the “Battle
Hymn.” He must have known, too, that she had already written stirring
verses. So he not only asked, but insisted that she should address the
men under his command.
“Feeling my utter inability to do this, I ran away and tried to hide
myself in one of the hospital tents. Colonel Greene twice found me and
brought me back to his piazza, where at last I stood and told as well
as I could how glad I was to meet the brave defenders of our cause and
how constantly they were in my thoughts.”[19]
I fear there is no record of this, her maiden speech.
Throughout her long life church-going was a comfort, one might almost
say a delight, to her. During this visit to Washington, where the weeks
brought so many sad sights, she had the pleasure of listening on Sunday
to the Rev. William Henry Channing. Love of his native land induced him
to leave his pulpit in England and to return to this country in her
hour of darkness and danger.
My mother tells us that this nephew of the great Dr. Channing was heir
to the latter’s spiritual distinction and deeply stirred by enthusiasm
in a noble cause. “On Sundays his voice rang out, clear and musical as
a bell, within the walls of the Unitarian church”[20]--her own church.
Thus she listened both in Washington and in Boston, her home city, to
men who were patriots as well as priests.
As she tells the story, one sees how almost all the circumstances of
her environment tended to promote her love of country and to stir the
emotions of her deeply religious nature. It was by no accident that the
national song which bears her name is a hymn. Written at that time and
amid those surroundings, it could not have been anything else.
Among her cherished memories of this visit was an interview with
Abraham Lincoln, arranged for the party by Governor Andrew. “I remember
well the sad expression of Mr. Lincoln’s deep blue eyes, the only
feature of his face which could be called other than plain.... The
President was laboring at this time under a terrible pressure of doubt
and anxiety.”[21]
The culminating event of her stay in Washington was the visit to the
Army of the Potomac on the occasion of a review of troops. As the
writing of the “Battle Hymn” was the immediate result of the memorable
experiences of that day, I shall defer their consideration till the
next chapter.
I have thus sketched briefly the train of events and experiences both
before and during the Civil War which led up to the composition of this
national hymn. The seed had lain germinating for years--at the last
it sprang suddenly into being. My mother’s mind often worked in this
way. It had a strongly philosophic tendency which made her think long
and study deeply. But she possessed, also, the fervor of the poet.
Her mental processes were often extremely rapid, especially under
the stress of strong emotion. She herself thought the quick action
of her mind was due to her red-haired temperament. The two opposing
characteristics of her intellect, deliberation and speed, were perhaps
the result of the mixed strains of her blood inherited from English and
French ancestors.
The student of her life will note a number of sudden inspirations, or
visions, as we may call them. Before these we can usually trace a long
period of meditation and reflection. Her peace crusade, her conversion
to the cause of woman suffrage, her dream of a golden time when men and
women should work together for the betterment of the world, were all of
this description.
The “Battle Hymn” was the most notable of these inspirations. In
her _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Struggle_ she ascribes its
composition to two causes--the religion of humanity and the passion
of patriotism. The former was a plant of slow growth. In her tribute
to Theodore Parker,[22] she tells us how this developed under his
preaching, and how he prepared his hearers for the war of blood and
iron that soon followed.
My mother had long cherished love for her country, but it burned more
intensely when the war came, bursting into sudden flame after that
memorable day with the soldiers.
“When the war broke out, the passion of patriotism lent its color to
the religion of humanity in my own mind, as in many others, and a
moment came in which I could say:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!
--and the echo which my words awoke in many hearts made me sure that
many other people had seen it also.”[23]
IV
“THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC”
“The crimson flower of battle blooms” in a single night--The vision
in the gray morning twilight--It is written down in the half-darkness
on her husband’s official paper of the U. S. Sanitary Commission--How
it was published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ and the price paid for
it--The John Brown air derived from a camp-meeting hymn--The simple
story in her own words.
Over and over again, so many times that she lost count of them, was my
mother asked to describe the circumstances under which she composed
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Fortunately she wrote them down, so
that we are able to give “the simple story” in her own words.
The following account is taken in part from her _Reminiscences_ and in
part from the leaflet printed in honor of her seventieth birthday, May
27, 1889, by the New England Woman’s Club. She was president of this
association for about forty years:
“I distinctly remember that a feeling of discouragement came over me
as I drew near the city of Washington. I thought of the women of my
acquaintance whose sons or husbands were fighting our great battle; the
women themselves serving in the hospitals or busying themselves with
the work of the Sanitary Commission. My husband, as already said, was
beyond the age of military service, my eldest son but a stripling; my
youngest was a child of not more than two years. I could not leave my
nursery to follow the march of our armies, neither had I the practical
deftness which the preparing and packing of sanitary stores demanded.
Something seemed to say to me, ‘You would be glad to serve, but you
cannot help any one; you have nothing to give, and there is nothing for
you to do.’ Yet, because of my sincere desire, a word was given me to
say which did strengthen the hearts of those who fought in the field
and of those who languished in prison.
“In the late autumn of the year 1861 I visited the national capital
with my husband, Dr. Howe, and a party of friends, among whom were
Governor and Mrs. Andrew, Mr. and Mrs. E. P. Whipple, and my dear
pastor, Rev. James Freeman Clarke.
“The journey was one of vivid, even romantic, interest. We were about
to see the grim Demon of War face to face, and long before we reached
the city his presence made itself felt in the blaze of fires along the
road, where sat or stood our pickets, guarding the road on which we
traveled.
“One day we drove out to attend a review of troops, appointed to take
place at some distance from the city. In the carriage with me were
James Freeman Clarke and Mr. and Mrs. Whipple. The day was fine, and
everything promised well, but a sudden surprise on the part of the
enemy interrupted the proceedings before they were well begun. A small
body of our men had been surrounded and cut off from their companions,
re-enforcements were sent to their assistance, and the expected pageant
was necessarily given up. The troops who were to have taken part in it
were ordered back to their quarters, and we also turned our horses’
heads homeward.
“For a long distance the foot soldiers nearly filled the road. They
were before and behind, and we were obliged to drive very slowly. We
presently began to sing some of the well-known songs of the war, and
among them:
‘John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave.’
This seemed to please the soldiers, who cried, ‘Good for you,’ and
themselves took up the strain. Mr. Clarke said to me, ‘You ought to
write some new words to that tune.’ I replied that I had often wished
to do so.
“In spite of the excitement of the day I went to bed and slept as
usual, but awoke next morning in the gray of the early dawn, and to my
astonishment found that the wished-for lines were arranging themselves
in my brain. I lay quite still until the last verse had completed
itself in my thoughts, then hastily arose, saying to myself, ‘I shall
lose this if I don’t write it down immediately.’ I searched for a sheet
of paper and an old stump of a pen which I had had the night before and
began to scrawl the lines almost without looking, as I had learned to
do by often scratching down verses in the darkened room where my little
children were sleeping. Having completed this, I lay down again and
fell asleep, but not without feeling that something of importance had
happened to me.”
It will be noted that the first draft of the “Battle Hymn” was written
on the back of a sheet of the letter-paper of the Sanitary Commission
on which her husband was then serving. Mr. A. J. Bloor, the assistant
secretary of that body, has called attention to this. His account of
the eventful day is given at the close of this chapter.
My mother gave the original draft of the “Battle Hymn” to her friend,
Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple, “who begged it of me, years ago.” Hence below
the letter-heading:
SANITARY COMMISSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.
TREASURY BUILDING
_1861_
we find the inscription
WILLARD’S HOTEL
JULIA W. HOWE
TO
CHARLOTTE B. WHIPPLE
The draft remained for many years in the possession of the latter,
until it was sent to Messrs. Houghton & Mifflin, in order to have a
facsimile made for the _Reminiscences_.
Mr. and Mrs. Whipple were among the familiar friends of our household
in those days. The former achieved brilliant successes both as a writer
and as a lecturer. He was greatly interested in the anti-slavery
agitation; “His eloquent voice was raised more than once in the cause
of human freedom.” The younger members of our family remember him best
for his ready and delightful wit. The fact that he was decidedly homely
seemed to give additional point to his funny sayings. Mrs. Whipple was
as handsome as her husband was plain--sweet-tempered and sympathetic,
yet not wanting in firmness.
Before publishing the poem the author made a number of changes, all
of which are, as I think, improvements. The last verse, which is an
anticlimax, was cut out altogether.
We find from her letters that she hesitated to allow the publication of
the original draft of the “Battle Hymn”[24] because it contained this
final verse. She did not consider it equal to the rest of the poem.[25]
After consulting other literary people, in her usual painstaking way,
she decided to have the first draft published.[26] It will be noted
that in the first verse “vintage” has been substituted for “wine
press.” The first line of the third verse read originally,
I have read a burning gospel writ in fiery rows of steel.
The later version,
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
brings out more clearly the image of the long lines of bayonets as they
glittered in her sight on that autumn afternoon. In the fourth verse
the second line was somewhat vague in the first draft,
He has waked the earth’s dull bosom with a high ecstatic beat,
The allusion was probably to the marching feet of the armed multitude.
The new version,
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat:
is more direct and simple, hence accords better with the deeply
religious tone of the poem.
In the last stanza,
In the whiteness of the lilies he was born across the sea,
now reads,
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
A number of people have asked the meaning of this line. The allusion
is evidently to the lilies carried by the angel, in pictures of the
annunciation to the Virgin, these flowers being the emblem of purity.
The original version of the second line read,
With a glory in his bosom that shines out on you and me,
The present words,
Transfigures you and me,
give us a clearer and more beautiful image. The passion of the poem
seems, indeed, to lift on high and glorify our poor humanity.
It is interesting to note that my mother associated with her husband
the line,
_He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat_;
Not long before her death, new buildings were erected at Watertown,
Massachusetts, for the Perkins Institution for the Blind, founded and
administered for more than forty years by Dr. Howe. His son-in-law,
Michael Anagnos, ably continued the work during thirty more years.
When we were talking about a suitable inscription in memory of the
latter, I suggested to my mother the use of this line. The answer was,
“_No, that is for your father._”
The original draft of the “Battle Hymn” is dated November, 1861; it
was published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for February, 1862. The verses
were printed on the first page, being thus given the place of honor.
According to the custom of that day, no name was signed to them. James
T. Fields was then editor of the magazine. My mother consulted him with
regard to a name for the poem. It was he, as I think, who christened
it “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The price paid for it was five
dollars. But the true price of it was a very different thing, not to
be computed in terms of money. It brought its author name and fame
throughout the civilized world, in addition to the love and honor of
her countrymen. As she grew older and the spiritual beauty of her life
and thought shone out more and more clearly, the affection in which she
was held deepened into something akin to veneration.
The “Battle Hymn” soon found its way from the pages of the _Atlantic
Monthly_ into the newspapers, thence to army hymn-books and broadsides.
It has been printed over and over again, in a great variety of forms,
sometimes with the picture of the author, as in the Perry prints. A
white silk handkerchief now in my possession bears the line,
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
worked in red embroidery silk.
My mother was called upon to copy the poem times without number. While
she was very willing to write a line or even, upon occasion, a verse
or two, she objected very decidedly, especially in her later years,
to copying the whole poem. Always responsive to the requests of the
autograph fiend, she felt that so much should not be asked of her. For
it naturally took time and trouble to make the fair copy that came up
to her standard. It was with some difficulty that I persuaded her to
send a promised copy to Edmund Clarence Stedman, for his collection.
“But mamma, you _said_ you would write it out for him.”
With a roguish twinkle, she replied, “Yes, but I did not say _when_.”
However, the verses were duly executed and sent to the banker-poet.
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” has been translated into Spanish,
Italian, Armenian, and doubtless other languages. New tunes have been
composed for it, but they have failed of acceptance. My mother dearly
loved music and was a trained musician, hence her choice of a tune was
no haphazard selection. She wrote her poem to the “John Brown” air and
they cannot be divorced.
I have been so fortunate as to secure from Franklin B. Sanborn an
account of the origin of the words and music of the “John Brown” song.
Mr. Sanborn, biographer of Thoreau, John Brown, and others, is the last
survivor of the brilliant group of writers belonging to the golden age
of New England literature.
CONCORD, MASS., _1916_.
DEAR MRS. HALL--I investigated quite thoroughly the air to which the
original John Brown folk song was set;...
I happened to be in Boston the day that Fletcher Webster’s regiment
(the 12th Mass. Volunteers) came up from Fort Warren, landed on Long
Wharf, and marched up State Street past the old State House, on
their way to take the train for the Front, in the summer of 1861.
As they came along, a quartette, of which Capt. Howard Jenkins,
then a sergeant in this regiment, was a tenor voice, was singing
something sonorous, which I had never heard. I asked my college
friend Jacobsen, of Baltimore, who stood near me, “What are they
singing?” He replied, “That boy on the sidewalk is selling copies.”
I approached him and bought a handbill which, without the music,
contained the rude words of the John Brown song, which I then heard
for the first time, but listened to a thousand times afterward
during the progress of the emancipating Civil War--before they were
superseded by Mrs. Howe’s inspired lines, which now take their place
almost everywhere.
The chorus was borne by the marching soldiers, who had practised
it in their drills at the Fort; indeed, it had been adapted from
a camp-meeting hymn to a marching song, for which it is admirably
fitted, by the bandmaster of Col. Webster’s regiment, and afterward
revised by Dodworth’s military band, then the best in the country.
It was this thrilling music, with its resounding religious chorus,
which Mrs. Howe, in company with our Massachusetts Governor Andrew,
heard near the Potomac, the next November, in the evening camps that
encircled Washington.
Yours ever,
F. B. SANBORN.
The following account of Mrs. Howe’s visit to Washington and of the
circumstances connected with the writing of the “Battle Hymn” was
written by Mr. A. J. Bloor, assistant secretary of the U. S. Sanitary
Commission:
“JULIA WARD HOWE
“It was the writer’s privilege to be introduced early in the Civil War
to Julia Ward Howe, the author of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,’
and now, through the fullness of her days, the dean of American
literature, though recognized long ago as having employed her high
gift of utterance not merely as the magnet to attract to herself an
advantageous celebrity, but paramountly as the instrument for the
righting of wrong and the amelioration of the current conditions of
humanity.
“I was presented to Mrs. Howe by her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe,
a companion of Lord Byron in aiding the Greeks to throw off the yoke of
the Turks, and the philanthropist who opened the gates of hope to the
famous Laura Bridgman, born blind, deaf, and dumb. Dr. Howe invented
various processes by which he rescued her from her living tomb, as
he subsequently did others born to similar deprivations, and he was
careful to leave on record such exhaustive and clear statements as
to his methods that, after his decease, the track was well illumined
wherein later any well-doer for other victims in like case might open
to them, through their single physical sense of touch, the doors
leading to all earthly knowledge so far stored in letters....
“Dr. Howe, on the outbreak of the Civil War, consented to serve as a
member of the U. S. Sanitary Commission, a volunteer organization of
influential Union men, springing from a central association in New York
City for the relief of the forces serving in the war, and consisting of
a few Union ladies, one of whom, Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler, suggested
the formation of a similar but larger and wider-spread body of men,
representing the Union sentiment of the whole North, into which her own
society should be merged as one of--so it turned out--many branches.
“Such a body was accordingly enrolled and, with Dr. Bellows, a
prominent Unitarian clergyman of the day, as its president, was
appointed a commission, by President Lincoln, as a _quasi_ Bureau
of the War Department, to complement the appliances and work of the
Government’s Medical Bureau and Commissariat, which, at the sudden
outbreak of the war, were very deficient.
“Of this commission I was the assistant secretary, with headquarters
at its central office in Washington.... On the occasion of General
McClellan’s first great review of the Army of the Potomac--numbering
at that time about seventy thousand men--at Upton’s Hill, in Virginia,
not far from the enemy’s lines, Dr. Howe asked me to accompany him
thither on horseback to see it, which I did. Mrs. Howe had preceded
us, with several friends, by carriage, and it was there, in the
midst of the blare and glitter and bedizened simulacra of actual and
abhorrent warfare, that he did me the honor of presenting me to his
wife, then known, outside her private circle, only as the author of a
book of charming lyrical essays; but for years since recognized, and
doubtless, in the future, will be adjudged, the inspired creator of a
war song which for rapt outlook, reverent mysticism, and stateliness of
expression, as well as for more widely appreciated patriotic ardor, has
more claim, in my estimation, to be styled a hymn than not a few that
swell the pages of some of our hymnals. I have always thought it an
honor even for the Sanitary Commission with all its noble work of help
to the nation in its straits, and of mercy to the suffering, that Julia
Ward Howe’s ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ should have been written on
paper headed ‘U. S. Sanitary Commission,’ as may be seen by a facsimile
of it in her delightful volume of reminiscences. It seems a pity that
Mrs. Howe, an accomplished musical composer in private, as well as a
poet in public, should not herself have set the air for her own words
in that famous utterance of insight, enthusiasm, and prophecy.”
V
THE ARMY TAKES IT UP
Gloom in Libby Prison, July 6, 1863--The victory of
Gettysburg--Chaplain McCabe sings “Mine eyes have seen the glory of
the coming of the Lord”--Five hundred voices take up the chorus--The
“Battle Hymn” at the national capital--The great throng shout,
sing, and weep--Abraham Lincoln listens with a strange glory on his
face--The army takes up the song.
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was inspired by the tremendous issues
of the war, as they were brought vividly to the poet’s mind by the
sight of the Union Army.
My mother had seen all that she describes--she had been a part of the
great procession of “burnished rows of steel” when her carriage was
surrounded by the Army. She had heard the soldiers singing:
“John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave,
His soul is marching on.”
Old John Brown who had
Died to make men free,
whose spirit the army knew to be with them!
All this sank deeply into the heart of the poet. The soul of the Army
took possession of her. The song which she wrote down in the gray
twilight of that autumn morning voiced the highest aspirations of
the soldiers, of the whole people. Hence, when the armies of freedom
heard it, they at once hailed it as their own. My mother writes in her
_Reminiscences_:
“The poem, which was soon after published in the _Atlantic Monthly_,
was somewhat praised on its appearance, but the vicissitudes of the war
so engrossed public attention that small heed was taken of literary
matters. I knew, and was content to know, that the poem soon found its
way to the camps, as I heard from time to time of its being sung in
chorus by the soldiers.”
This was the beginning, but the interest increased as the “Battle Hymn”
became more and more widely known, until it grew to be one of the
leading lyrics of the war. It was “sung, chanted, recited, and used in
exhortation and prayer on the eve of battle.” “It was the word of the
hour, and the Union armies marched to its swing.”
The “singing chaplain”--Rev. Charles Cardwell McCabe of the 122d Ohio
Regiment of Volunteers, did much to popularize this war lyric. Reading
it in the _Atlantic Monthly_, he was so charmed with the lines that
he committed them to memory before arising from his chair. A year or
so later, while attending the wounded men of his regiment, after the
battle of Winchester (June, 1863), he was taken prisoner and carried to
Libby Prison. Here he was a living benediction to the prisoners. Deeply
religious by nature and blest with a cheerful, happy disposition, he
kept up the spirits of his companions, ministering alike to their
bodily and spiritual needs. Thus he begged three bath-tubs for them,
an inestimable treasure, even though these had to serve the needs of
six hundred men. Books, too, he procured for them, for the prisoners
at this time comprised a notable company of men--doctors, teachers,
editors, merchants, lawyers. “We bought books when we needed bread,”
the chaplain tells us.
With the music of his wonderful voice he was wont to dispel the gloom
that often settled upon the inmates of the prison. Many stories are
told of its power, pathos, and magnetism. Whenever the dwellers in old
Libby felt depression settling upon their spirits they would call out,
“Chaplain, sing us a song.” Then “The heavy load that oppressed us all
seemed as by magic to be lifted.”