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The Battle Hymn of the Republic
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"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is an American abolitionist song, written by Julia Ward Howe in November 1861 and first published in The Atlantic Monthly on 1 February 1862, that became popular during the American Civil War.
tune was written around 1855 by William Steffe. The lyrics at that time were alternately called "Canaan's Happy Shore" or "Brothers, Will You Meet Me?" and the song was sung as a campfire spiritual. The tune spread across the United States, taking on many sets of new lyrics.
Thomas Bishop, from Vermont, joined the Massachusetts Infantry before the outbreak of war and wrote a popular set of lyrics, circa 1860, titled "John Brown's Body" which became one of his unit's walking songs.
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Encyclopedia
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is an American abolitionist song, written by Julia Ward Howe in November 1861 and first published in The Atlantic Monthly on 1 February 1862, that became popular during the American Civil War.
History
The tune was written around 1855 by William Steffe. The lyrics at that time were alternately called "Canaan's Happy Shore" or "Brothers, Will You Meet Me?" and the song was sung as a campfire spiritual. The tune spread across the United States, taking on many sets of new lyrics.
Thomas Bishop, from Vermont, joined the Massachusetts Infantry before the outbreak of war and wrote a popular set of lyrics, circa 1860, titled "John Brown's Body" which became one of his unit's walking songs. According to writer Irwin Silber (who has written a book about Civil War folk songs), the original lyrics were not about John Brown, the famed abolitionist, but a Scotsman of the same name who was a member of the 12th Massachusetts Regiment. An article by writer Mark Steyn maintains that the men of John Brown's unit had made up a song poking fun at him, and sang it widely. Though "Canaan's Happy Shore" has a verse and chorus of equal metrical length, "John Brown's Body" has a longer verse to accommodate the words packed into its line.
Bishop's battalion was dispatched to Washington, D.C. early in the Civil War, and Julia Ward Howe heard this song during a public review of the troops in Washington. Whatever the accuracy of Silber's and Steyn's accounts, the lyrics heard by Howe were about John Brown the abolitionist. Her companion at the review, the Reverend James Clarke, suggested to Howe that she write new words for the fighting men's song. Staying at the Willard Hotel in Washington on the night of November 18, 1861, Howe awoke with the words of the song in her mind and in near darkness wrote the verses to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" . Of the writing of the lyrics, Howe remembers, "I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I 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.' So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper."
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. The song was also published as a broadside in 1863 by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments in Philadelphia. In Howe's lyrics, the words of the verse are packed into a longer line, contrasted with the chorus's short refrain. Both "John Brown" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" were published in Father Kemp's Old Folks Concert Tunes in 1874 and reprinted in 1889. Both songs had the same Chorus with an additional "Glory" in the second line: "Glory! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!"
Julia Ward Howe was the wife of Samuel Gridley Howe, the famed scholar in education of the blind. Samuel and Julia were also active leaders in anti-slavery politics and strong supporters of the Union.
Score
- One version of the melody, in C major, begins as below. This is an example of the mediant-octave modal frame.
Lyrics
Influence
In politics and society
- The Battle Hymn of the Republic is usually played at the conclusion of the national convention of the Republican Party.
- The popular union song "Solidarity Forever", written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915, also used the melody of "John Brown's Body."
- It was also the basis for the anthem of the American consumers' cooperative movement, "The Battle Hymn of Cooperation", written in 1932.
- The US Army Chorus (a component of The United States Army Band) sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" at the ceremony welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to the White House on April 16, 2008. The performance was of the famous arrangement by Peter Wilhousky. The version was praised across the media. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh replayed the version multiple times in the days that followed; CBS News's Harry Smith wrote that he wept after hearing it.
In popular culture
- The lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic appear in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermons and speeches, most notably in his speech "How Long, Not Long" from the steps of the Montgomery, Alabama Courthouse on March 25, 1965 after the 3rd Selma March, and in his final sermon "I've Been to the Mountaintop", delivered in Memphis, Tennessee on the evening of April 3, 1968, the night before his assassination. In fact, the latter sermon, King's last public words, ends with the first lyrics of the Battle Hymn, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
- In 1960 the Mormon Tabernacle Choir won the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus. The single record had reached #13 on Billboard's Hot 100 the previous autumn.
- In 1993, Sweet Honey in the Rock recorded "Sojourner's Battle Hymn," which they adapted from Sojourner Truth's version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Truth had written her version, "The Valiant Soldiers," as a marching song for colored regiments in the Civil War. This appears to be the same song as Captain Lindley Miller's "Marching Song of the First Arkansas."
- In 1947 the song was sung as a peace anthem at the Peace World Scout Jamboree in France, following which the Scout troop of the Merida´s Mexico 3 Group adopted the song as their anthem.
- In 1980 the song was sung in an original version from the 1860s during a music festival to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the City of Boston.
- The country music group SHeDAISY recorded their version of the song in 2005.
- The Christian metal band Stryper recorded their version of the song in 1985 on their album Soldiers Under Command. Since then, it has been used as the intro to all their concerts.
In television
- Judy Garland performed the song on an episode of The Judy Garland Show in late 1963 in honor of recently-assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Garland and Kennedy were close friends. It was also played at Garland's funeral.
- The song plays as the soundtrack in The West Wing episode 20 Hours in America, Part I. In the episode, President Bartlet has just finished addressing a group of sailors and Marines and is seen walking under an American flag with the song playing in the background.
- An episode of Andromeda is called To Loose The Fateful Lightning.
- An episode of The 4400 is called Terrible Swift Sword.
- Can be heard on some Barney & Friends episodes as the song S-M-I-L-E and (S)He Waded in the Water
- In an episode of Band of Brothers the soldiers sing the song with alternative lyrics about the life as a paratrooper, called Blood on the Risers.
- In an episode of Most Haunted, the crew sings it in the Whaley House in San Diego to draw out the spirit of James Whaley.
- On the episode "The Flood" of the cartoon show Hey Arnold!, 4th grade teacher Mr. Simmons (voiced by Dan Butler) sings part of the song when he is on the edge of falling off a ladder into the flood waters.
- In the episode of The Simpsons entitled Deep Space Homer, Buzz Aldrin and Race Banyon are humming this song during a risky re-entry of their space shuttle into Earth (a reference to The Right Stuff, see below).
- The Canadian television series Hilarious House of Frightenstein uses an anthem sung to the tune of The Battle Hymn.
In film
- The tune of the song has been used in at least 44 films to date, the first being Mother Machree in 1928 and the most recent Rocket Science in 2007.
- In the movie The Right Stuff, John Glenn (played by Ed Harris) hums the tune during the tense reentry of his space capsule after learning of a technical malfunction.
- In Oliver Stone's film of Nixon a rousing rendition of the music (by John Williams) is played during the Republican Party Conference.
- In American History X Derek's (Edward Norton) friend and white supremacist Seth (Ethan Suplee), sings a modified racist version while driving his car.
- In the film Stonewall Matty Dean sings a gay rights version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
- In the film Inherit the Wind, the song is played at the end when Henry Drummond grabs a Bible as well as Charles Darwin's book, The Origin of Species.
In games
- In the 1991 computer game, Sid Meier's Civilization, a variation on Battle Hymn played in a minor key was used as the theme song for Abe Lincoln, leader of the Americans.
- A Civil War wargame released in 1975 was named Terrible Swift Sword.
- The song was used as the ending theme song to the original Black Ops game in Something Awful's Traditional Games forum.
- In "American Civil War Gettysburg", the melody of this song is used as the main theme song.
- The Bethesda Softworks game Fallout 3 includes an instrumental rendition of the song as one of the elements of the propagandist Enclave radio station's broadcast.
In books
- 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.
- 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).
- Jerry Pournelle's 1975 short story His Truth Goes Marching on begins with the main character humming the song.
- Colonel Dean E. Hess, U.S. Air Force, an ordained minister who left the clergy to fly over 300 combat missions as a fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War, titled his 1957 autobiography Battle Hymn. It was in turn adapted into a film of the same title.
- Terrible Swift Sword and Never Call Retreat are the titles of the second and third volumes of Bruce Catton's Centennial History of the Civil War.
- Michael Shaara prefaces each division of his 1974 book The Killer Angels with a line from the Battle Hymn.
- In the book Eclipse (novel), the third book of the Twilight series written by Stephenie Meyer, Alice translates the hymn into Arabic in order to hide her thoughts from Edward.
- In the book Insurrection by David Weber and Steve White, it is played in lieu of either star nations anthem when the leader of the Republic arrives on earth for peace negations
In memorials
- The Battle Hymn was played at the funerals of Robert F. Kennedy, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (whose mother was American) and U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford. It was also played at a Westminster Abbey memorial service for President John F. Kennedy and at a more recent memorial service for expatriate British television personality Alistair Cooke.
- The Battle Hymn was played at the conclusion of the National Service of Prayer and Remembrance on Friday, September 14, 2001.
- The Battle Hymn was played by the band outside Buckingham Palace, the primary residence of HM The Queen as an immediate tribute to the dead of 9/11 on September 12, 2001. The Guards outside the palace normally play British patriotic anthems and songs, making this a deliberate exception staged as a gesture of respect to the victims of 9/11 and an expression of the United Kingdom's solidarity with America.
In sports
- The Saint Joseph's University Pep Band plays the entire tune after home victories in its Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse. The school's fight song "Mine Eyes" is sung to the tune as well.
- Auburn University and Auburn High School both play the song "Glory, Glory to Ole Auburn"—to the tune of the chorus of the Battle Hymn—after extra points at football games.
- The tune was used for a Northern Ireland national football team anthem, "We're Not Brazil, We're Northern Ireland"
- The Cavalier Marching Band of the University of Virginia performs a University of Virginia fight song titled "Glory to Virginia" or simply "Glory," which takes its tune from the chorus, during the football pre-game show and at University sporting events.
- "Glory Glory Colorado," one of the fight songs of the University of Colorado, takes its tune from the Battle Hymn.
- Just before each University of Georgia football game begins, a lone trumpeter stands in the Southwest corner of Sanford Stadium and plays the first phrase, with the entire Redcoat Band joining after the first phrase. The UGA band also plays the entire song after home victories. The same is practiced at the beginning of basketball games, with the trumpeter at center court and the pep band joining in the song. The music for The Battle Hymn of the Republic is actually the basis for UGA's fight song: "Glory, Glory to Ol'Georgia," or just "Glory" as it is known. The Georgia Tech marching band also sings a parody called "To Hell With Georgia" under the stands of Bobby Dodd Stadium before every game.
- The tune is used in football chants in England, originally sung by supporters of Tottenham Hotspur in the mid 1950's, but since spreading to other teams, with versions such as "Glory Glory Man United" and "Glory Glory Leeds United".
- In the National Hockey League, the tune is used as a song against the Montreal Canadiens called "The Hab Song" which insults the team and its fans.
- 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.
- The Battle Hymn is played by the University of Minnesota Marching Band during the pregame show of Minnesota Golden Gopher football games in tandem with its trademark "swinging gates" formation. It is also played by the school's pep band at the end of a Men's Hockey series sweep .
- The tune is used for the SANFL Football Club Song of Woodville-West Torrens Football Club.
- Basis for the South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby league team song, "Glory Glory To South Sydney"
- In 1994, on the occasion of the 1994 FIFA World Cup held in the United States, Daryl Hall – with the choral group The Sound of Blackness using the tone of the anthem – sang the official song of the event, "Gloryland".
- The tune is used in Germany as a cheer for star forward Lukas Podolski, a player for FC Bayern Muenchen.
- The school song of Queen's University Oil Thigh is sung to the full tune of the Battle Hymn
- The United States Naval Academy's "The Goat is Old and Gnarly," sung most often by USNA plebes at the Army/Navy game, was adopted from the tune of the hymn.
- The song is the trade mark song of the Troopers Drum and Bugle Corps from Casper, WY and is performed by them at nearly every performance as a warm up or even a part as their show.
- The tune is also used to celebrate a try at Downlands MSC College in Toowoomba.
- The Mighty Sound of Maryland marching band at the University of Maryland, College Park plays the tune as it forms the letters "USA" on the field prior to the playing of the The Star-Spangled Banner.
In theme parks
In other songs
- "Praise ye the name of the Lord" by Protopriest Mikhail Vinogradov, music for the Polyeleos, an element of the Orthodox Christian Matins service.
- The Mormon Tabernacle Choir recorded a version of the song. It was released as a single in 1959 and reached #13 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. It also won a Grammy the following year. There is a slight modification to one of the verses.
- In 1982, French singer Mireille Mathieu appeared with "Trois milliards de gens sur la terre" ("Three billion people on earth"), a pacifist song set to the Battle Hymn melody.
- Melanie Safka's song "Psychotherapy", from the album "Leftover Wine" uses the melody to support lyrics satirising (mainly Freudian) psychology, with the chorus ending with the line "As the id goes marching on!"
- Alexander Glazunov's Triumphal March, op. 40 (1892), composed for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, uses the tune throughout .
- "Flying Regulations", a post WWII jody takes its melody from the Battle Hymn. Oscar Brand recorded a version, titled "Glory Flying Regulations" for his album The Wild Blue Yonder.
- The melody of the song (without the chorus) is used in the nursery rhyme Little Peter Rabbit
- The melody was given a new lyric as a song of the British soldiers in World War One: "They were only playing leapfrog ... when one staff officer jumped right over the other staff officer's back". The song was later discovered by Charles Chilton and used in the musical Oh, What a Lovely War! (1963).
- 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".
- Brazilian christian rock band Oficina G3 have recorded two versions of this song for their album Indiferença, the first one being a guitar solo based on the song, and the second one a sung rock version of it.
- The Japanese electronics retailer Yodobashi Camera uses the melody of the song in their in-store advertising jingle. 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 Guides.
- British cult band Half Man Half Biscuit (a favorite of 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 fucking hell are Slipknot?" "..in relation to me getting out of bed."
- "Blood on the Risers", a World War II paratrooper song, had its melody taken from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".
- Peter Wilhousky wrote a concert arrangement used by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and other ensembles of voice and instruments .
- Many members of the Boy Scouts of America are familiar with the tune as the campfire song,
- Basis of the drinking song Godiva's Hymn used by many engineering faculties
- The first verse and chorus of The Battle Hymn of the Republic is sung in the background at the end of the Dream Theater song "In the Name of God" on their album Train of Thought. This rendition is possibly intended to be ironic, as it is sung in an uncharacteristic minor key. Also, the Dream Theater song is about the wrongs committed in the name of God, clearly contrasting with the lyrics of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
- A version of the hymn (the first verse and chorus only) with upbeat blues music called "Glory, Glory" was performed by Blues Traveler in their early years.
- American rock band Clutch (band) quotes part of the chorus in their song "Pile Driver"
- In Thailand, The tune was used in March Anthem of Chulalongkorn University(Dern-Chula)
- The IWW protest song Solidarity Forever uses the music of the hymn's music, as it was often sung in response to the Salvation Army's counter protests.
- The Irish band The Wolfe Tones used the tune for their sone The Belfast Brigade, a light-hearted song about the IRA's Belfast Brigade.
- Fraternal song of Delta Upsilon entitled "Delta Upsilon Forever"
Parodies
- "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 1991 March issue of MAD Magazine featured a parody of the song called "The Hymn of the Battered Republic", written by Frank Jacobs.
- 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 featured in the movie American History X, sung by Ethan Suplee.
- Yet another parody, "Hang Jeff Davis on a Sour Apple Tree/Down went McGinty to the bottom of the sea", has now become one of the official songs of the University of Pennsylvania.
- 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.
- The radio show "A Prairie Home Companion" featured a version of the tune with the lyrics "One black bug bled blue-black blood while another black bug bled blue" and "One sliced snake slid up the slide while another sliced snake slid down", and the chorus "Glory, glory, how peculiar". The credits to its tenth anniversary show were set to the song, and began "A Prairie Home Companion was produced by Margaret Moos
" The "Me and Choir" monologue on the "Spring News from Lake Wobegon" tape and CD has a version of the burning of the school version as discussed above.
- United States Army Paratroopers created the song Blood on the Risers to the tune of Battle Hymn, with the refrain Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die. In Great Britain, scouts often sing the parody, "He jumped without a parachute from twenty thousand feet," when on camps.
- The JibJab.com animation "What We Call the News" was set to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
- Children delight in annoying adults and each other by singing the lyrics "I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves (x3) and this is how it goes" to the tune of the Battle Hymn.
- Allan Sherman's "The Ballad of Harry Lewis", a song about a man dying while working in a cloth business.
- Ina T and the RVs recorded a version titled "Honey, Have You Seen the Highway?", about an older couple who have trouble getting their bearings (Each verse ends with, "I think we're lost again!")
- A parody called "I Wear My Pink Pajamas" has been used for decades to send children to bed. "I wear my pink pajamas in the summer when it's hot./ I wear my pink pajamas in the winter when it's not.(or, I wear my flannel nightie in the winter when it's not)/ But sometimes in the springtime and sometimes in the fall,/ I jump right into bed with nothin' on at all."
- A popular summer camp song to the same tune goes: "I like bananas coconuts and grapes (x3) and that's why they call me Tarzan of the Apes!" where the first part of the song ("I like bananas...") is sung more quietly each time it is repeated and the second part of the song ("and that's why they call me...") is sung louder and louder.
- There is another parody in the book "The Rule of Four" regarding the Tiger Inn and the other school clubs
- In 1974 the popular BBC comedy trio "The Goodies" used the tune for their song "Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me", which was a double-A side with "The Inbetweenies" - a number 7 hit in January 1975.
- In the Philippines, the tune of the song was used for the mocking song "Gloria, Gloria Lavandera." "Lavandera" means "washerwoman", while the name "Gloria" refers to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
- Prof. Harold Baum's "The Battle Hymn of the Aerobes" in The Biochemists' Songbook describes the molecular machinery for oxidative phosphorylation in the membrane of the mitochondrion.
Media
See also
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. London: Oxford University Press.
- Stutler, Boyd B. (1960). Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! The Story of "John Brown's Body" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Cincinnati: The C. J. Krehbiel Co.
- Clifford, Deborah Pickman. (1978). Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Biography of Julia Ward Howe. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.
- Vowell, Sarah. (2005). "John Brown's Body," in The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad. Ed. by Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus. New York: W. W. Norton.
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