The Story of the Battle Hymn of the Republic/Chapter 8

by Florence Marion Howe Hall

VIII

Tributes to "the Battle Hymn"

From Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Conan Doyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Dean Howells, U. S. Senator George F. Hoar,^[1] Thomas Starr King, Ina Coolbrith, and others—The "Battle Hymn" and the "Marseillaise"—What Rudyard Kipling said of it in "The Light that Failed"—English reprints distributed among the soldiers of the present war.

THE appeal of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is so wide that it takes in all classes of mankind, all, at least, who love freedom.

Wherever rise the peoples, Wherever sinks a throne,The throbbing heart of freedom Finds an answer in his own.

So wrote the poet Whittier of Samuel Gridley Howe, remembering his services to the Greeks, to the Poles and others. The lines are equally true of his wife, Julia Ward Howe, and of the spirit animating her war lyric. Although written in the midst of the greatest civil war that was ever fought and won, there is no word of North or South, no appeal to local pride or patriotism, no word of sectional strife or bitterness. The God to whom appeal is made is the God of freedom. The enemy to be overcome, the serpent who is to be crushed beneath the heel of the hero, is slavery.

It is amusing and yet sad to find that some literal souls have fancied that my mother intended to designate the Southerners by "the grapes of wrath." Needless to say that the writer intended no such narrow and prosaic meaning.

The "Battle Hymn" may well be compared to the "Marseillaise." The man is to be pitied who can hear either of them without a thrill of answering emotion. Both have the power to move their hearers profoundly, yet they are as different as the two nationalities which gave them birth. The French national hymn appeals to us by its wonderfully stirring music more than by the words. We can imagine how the latter aroused to a frenzy of feeling the men of the French Revolution, when they rose to throw off the yoke of centuries of oppression and misrule. Feudalism perished in France to the fiery music of the "Marseillaise." Slavery died in America to the old "John Brown" tune, as slow and steadfast in movement as the Northern race who sang it.

In our war lyric we seem to hear an echo of the old cry, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon." Yet we did not fully recognize its tremendous power until Kipling christened it "The terrible Battle Hymn of the Republic."

In the closing scene of The Light that Failed^[2] we are shown a group of English newspaper correspondents about to start for a war in the Soudan. They are met together for a last evening of song and merrymaking, yet one of their number "by the instinct of association began to hum the terrible Battle Hymn of the Republic. Man after man caught it up—it was a tune they knew well, till the windows shook to the clang, the Nilghai's deep voice leading:

"'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.'"

Sir A. Conan Doyle pays a similar tribute to its power in Through the Magic Door:

"Take the songs which they sang during the most bloody war which the Anglo-Celtic race has ever waged—the only war in which it could have been said that they were stretched to their uttermost and showed their true form . . . all had a playful humor running through them. Only one exception do I know, and that is the most tremendous war song I can recall; even an outsider in time of peace can hardly read it without emotion. I mean, of course, Julia Ward Howe's war song of the Republic, with the choral opening line,

'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.'

If that were ever sung upon a battle-field the effect must have been terrific."

During the present war in Europe, an English lady has had a large number of copies of the "Hymn" printed and distributed, through the Young Men's Christian Association, to the soldiers. They contain the following explanation: "This magnificent 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' was written in 1861 by a famous American lady, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, for the Army of the Northern States of America, which were then engaged in a 'Holy War' to rid the South of slavery and to preserve the Union of the States. It is said to have done more to awaken the spirit of patriotism and to have inspired more deeds of heroism than any other event of the American Civil War."

It is pleasant and heartening to read these tributes of praise from distinguished Englishmen. That our "Battle Hymn of the Republic" should so strongly appeal to them shows us the essential unity of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, even though oceans roll between Great Britain and America.

The strange glory that came over the face of Abraham Lincoln and the tears he shed on hearing the "Battle Hymn" will always be, for his countrymen, the most precious tribute to its power.

"The chaplain afterward stated that in his conversation with Mr. Lincoln at his reception, the President said to him, 'Take it all in all, the song and the singing, that was the best I ever heard.'"^[3]

To the steadfast and courageous soul of another great American, who also has held the high office of President of these United States, Theodore Roosevelt, this war hymn strongly appealed. His book, Fear God and Take Your Own Part, is prefaced by "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and by the following dedication:

"This book is dedicated to the memory of

Julia Ward Howe

because in the vital matters fundamentally affecting the life of the Republic she was as good a citizen of the Republic as Washington and Lincoln themselves. She was in the highest sense a good wife and a good mother, and therefore she fulfilled the primary law of our being. She brought up with devoted care and wisdom her sons and her daughters. At the same time she fulfilled her full duty to the commonwealth from the public standpoint. She preached righteousness and she practised righteousness. She sought the peace that comes as the handmaiden of well-doing. She preached that stern and lofty courage of soul which shrinks neither from war nor from any other form of suffering and hardship and danger if it is only thereby that justice can be served. She embodied that trait more essential than any other in the make-up of the men and women of this Republic—the valor of righteousness."

In the letter given below, Hon. George F. Hoar, United States Senator from Massachusetts, compares "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" with the "Marseillaise" and with the "British National Anthem."

Worcester, Mass., May 22, 1903.

I was thinking, just as I got your letter asking me to send a greeting to your meeting and to Mrs. Howe, of the great power, in framing the character of nations, of their National Anthems. Fletcher of Saltoun said, as every child knows, "Let me make the songs of a people, and I care not who make their laws." No single influence has had so much to do with shaping the destiny of a nation, as nothing more surely expresses national character, than what is known as the National Anthem. France adopted for hers the "Marseillaise." Its stirring appeal

Sons of France, awake to glory!

led the youth of France to march through Europe, subduing kingdoms and overthrowing dynasties, till "forty centuries looked down on them from the pyramids." At last the ambition of France perished and came to grief, as every unholy ambition is destined to perish and come to grief, and her great Emperor died in exile at St. Helena.

Is there anything more cheap and vulgar than the National Anthem of our English brethren, "God Save the King"?

O Lord our God, arise!Scatter his enemies And make them fall.Confound their politics,Frustrate their knavish tricks;On him our hopes we fix; God save us all!

England, I hope, knows better now. But she has acted on that motto for a thousand years.

New England's Anthem,

The breaking waves dashed high,

one of the noblest poems in all literature, was written by a woman.

We waited eighty years for our American National Anthem. At last God inspired an illustrious and noble woman to utter in undying verse the thought which we hope is forever to animate the soldier of the Republic.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,With a glory in His bosom which transfigures you and me;As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,While God is marching on!

Julia Ward Howe cannot yet vote in America. But her words will be an inspiration to the youth of America on many a hard-fought field for liberty many a century after her successors will vote.

I am faithfully yours,

George F. Hoar.

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell.

In the journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson we find this tribute to his friend, Julia Ward Howe:

"I honour the author of the 'Battle Hymn' and of 'The Flag.' She was born in the city of New York. I could well wish she were a native of Massachusetts. We have had no such poetess in New England."

The little bit of State pride voiced in the regret that my mother was not a native of the old Bay State, surprises us in a man of such wide sympathies as Mr. Emerson. In Whittier's early poems also the local feeling is strongly pronounced. We should remember, however, that during the nineteenth century a good deal of sectional feeling still existed in the different States. The twentieth century finds us more closely united as a people than we have ever been before.

Edmund Clarence Stedman happily characterizes the war hymn in the following passage. It occurs in a letter to me, asking that my mother would copy it for him.

"I can well understand what a Frankenstein's monster such a creation grows to be—such a poem as the 'Battle Hymn' when it has become the sacred scroll of millions, each one of whom would fain obtain a copy of it."^[4]

Those who have visited the White Mountains will remember that one of the peaks is called "Starr King." It was named for Thomas Starr King, a noted Unitarian preacher in the middle of the nineteenth century. Shortly before the Civil War he accepted a call to San Francisco. In addition to officiating in the church there he soon took upon his shoulders a task that was too heavy for his somewhat frail physique. This was nothing less than persuading the people of California to remain loyal to the Union. There was a good deal of secession sentiment on the Pacific coast in 1861. Starr King and his fellow-Unionists succeeded in their undertaking, but he paid the penalty of overwork with his life. Hence his memory is beloved and revered on the shores of the Pacific as well as on those of the Atlantic. One can imagine what the "Battle Hymn" must have meant to him, weary as he was with his strenuous labors. He pronounced it "a miraculously perfect poem."

Another "Spray of Western Pine" was contributed to the garland of praise by Ina Coolbrith, one of the last survivors of the golden age of California literature.

Julia Ward Howe

When with the awful lightning of His glance, Jehovah, thro' the mighty walls of sea His people led from their long bondage free,—A Woman's hand, too light to lift the lance,Miriam, the Prophetess, with song and dance, With timbrel, and with harp and psaltery, Struck the proud notes of triumphs yet to be, And voiced her Israel's deliverance.

So in our own dear Land, in strife to save Another race oppressed, when light grew dim, And the Red Sea of blood loomed fatefullyTo overwhelm, the God of freedom gave Thro' Woman's lips His sacred battle hymn  That rang thro' combat on to victory!

When memorial services were held in honor of my mother, Boston's great Symphony Hall was crowded to its utmost capacity. Many were the beautiful tributes to her given by men and women of national reputation. None, however, equaled in heartfelt eloquence the speech of Lewis, the distinguished negro lawyer. As he poured out the gratitude of his race to the woman who had written "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," I suddenly realized for the first time what the words meant to the colored people.

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.

"To make us, black men and black women, free!" The appeal was to the white men of our country, bidding them share the freedom they so dearly prized with the despised slave. And this triumphant gospel of liberty with its stirring chorus of "Glory, glory, hallelujah" was sung wherever the Northern army went. It was the first proclamation of emancipation. If it moves us, how must it have affected the people to whom it was a prophecy of the longed-for deliverance from bondage.

1. See Chapter IX.
2. In the later editions of the novel another scene is substituted for this.
3. Life of Chaplain McCabe—"the singing chaplain."
4. Julia Ward Howe. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.