Julia Ward Howe is the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. She wrote this song during the Civil War at the request of James Freeman Clarke after she had toured a Union Soldier Camp in Virginia. She and her husband were on their way to the White House to meet with President Lincoln.
In her own words,
"I replied that I had often wished to do so…. n spite of the excitement of the day I went to bed and slept as usual, but awoke the 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 an old sheet of paper and an old stub of a pen which I had had the night before, and began to scrawl the lines almost without looking, as I learned to do by often scratching down verses in the darkened room when my little children were sleeping. Having completed this, I lay down again and fell asleep, but not before feeling that something of importance had happened to me."
First published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862, it has long become a favorite Patriotic Anthem for our Nation. This morning as I was reflecting on the featured post Brian Brady wrote, and the perlious times we live in and are facing, I remembered how America has been in threatening situations before and we have survived.
In the early 1830s, a Frenchman named Alexis deTocqueville came to America to examine its civil institutions. Although it has been debated if deTocqueville actually said this, it can not be debated that both Democratics and Republican have used this quote in speeches for many years.
"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
Here are the original words of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". (Listen and watch as you read the words)
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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Stay strong, stay faithful, stay honest, stay loving, stay true to who you are, most importantly stay true to who God is as you'll be who you are, and you'll be happy, you'll be you, you'll be free. -Jamie Caulk
