THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
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 fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I have 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.
– Julia Ward Howe.
This is, perhaps, the most elevated and lofty strain of American patriotism. Julia Ward Howe is a worthy author of such a hymn. She was the daughter of Samuel Ward, a solid New York banker of his time. Her mother, Julia Rush Ward, was herself a poet of good ability. Mrs. Howe received a very fine education, and, in addition to ordinary college culture, speaks fluently Italian, French, and Greek. In her girlhood she was a devout student of Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, Comte, and Fichte. Her literary work had given her considerable prominence before her marriage to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, of Boston, just then famous for his self-sacrificing services in association with Lord Byron in behalf of the liberty of the Greeks, and henceforth to become forever immortal for his life-long devotion to the cause of the blind. America never produced a more daring and benevolent man than Doctor Howe.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic had its birth-throes amid the storms of war. In December, 1861, Mrs. Howe, in company with her husband, Governor and Mrs. John A. Andrew, Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, and other friends, made a journey to Washington. They arrived in the night. As their train sped on through the darkness, they saw in vivid contrast the camp fires of the pickets set to guard the line of the railroad. The troops lay encamped around the Capital City, their lines extending to a considerable distance. At the hotel where the Boston party were entertained, officers and their orderlies were conspicuous, and army ambulances were constantly arriving and departing. The gallop of horsemen, the tramp of foot soldiers, the noise of drum, fife, and bugle were heard continually. The two great powers were holding each other in check, and the very air seemed tense with expectancy. The one absorbing thought in Washington was the army, and the time of the visitors was generally employed in visits to the camps and hospitals.
One day during this visit a party which included Doctor and Mrs. Howe and Doctor Clarke attended a review of the Union troops at a distance of several miles from the city. The maneuvers were interrupted by a sudden attack of the enemy, and instead of the spectacle promised them, they saw some reinforcements of cavalry gallop hastily to the aid of a small force of Federal troops which had been surprised and surrounded. They returned to the city as soon as possible, but their progress was much impeded by marching troops who nearly filled the highway. As they had to drive very slowly, in order to beguile the time they began to sing army songs, among which the John Brown song soon came to mind. This caught the ear of the soldiers and they joined in the inspiring chorus, and made it ring and ring again. Mrs. Howe was greatly impressed by the long lines of soldiers and the devotion and enthusiasm which they evinced, as they sung while they marched, John Brown’s Body. James Freeman Clarke, seeing Mrs. Howe’s deep emotion which was mirrored in her intense face, said:
“You ought to write some new words to go with that tune.”
“I will,” she earnestly replied.
She went back to Washington, went to bed, and finally fell asleep. She awoke in the night to find her now famous hymn beginning to form itself in her brain. As she lay still in the dark room, line after line and verse after verse shaped themselves. When she had thought out the last of these, she felt that she dared not go to sleep again lest they should be effaced by a morning nap. She sprang out of bed and groped about in the dim December twilight to find a bit of paper and the stump of a pencil with which she had been writing the evening before. Having found these articles, and having long been accustomed to jot down stray thoughts with scarcely any light in a room made dark for the repose of her infant children, she very soon completed her writing, went back to bed, and fell fast asleep.
What sublime and splendid words she had written! There is in them the spirit of the old prophets. Nothing could be grander than the first line: —
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
In the second verse one sees through her eyes the vivid picture she had witnessed in her afternoon’s visit to the army: —
“I have seen him in the watchfires 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.”
In the third and fourth verses there is a triumphant note of daring faith and prophecy that was wonderfully contagious, and millions of men and women took heart again as they read or sang and caught its optimistic note: —
“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.”
On returning to Boston, Mrs. Howe carried her hymn to James T. Fields, at that time the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and it was first published in that magazine. The title, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was the work of Mr. Fields.
Strange to say, when it first appeared the song aroused no special attention. Though it was destined to have such world-wide appreciation, it won its first victory in Libby Prison. Nearly a year after its publication, a copy of a newspaper containing it was smuggled into the prison, where many hundreds of Northern officers and soldiers were confined, among them being the brilliant Chaplain, now Bishop, Charles C. McCabe. The Chaplain could sing anything and make music out of it, but he seized on this splendid battle hymn with enthusiastic delight. It makes the blood in one’s veins boil again with patriotic fervor to hear him tell how the tears rained down strong men’s cheeks as they sang in the Southern prison, far away from home and friends, those wonderful closing lines: —
“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.”
It was Chaplain McCabe who had the privilege and honor of calling public attention to the song after his release. He came to Washington and in his lecture (that has come to be almost as famous as the battle hymn) on “The Bright Side of Life in Libby Prison,” he described the singing of the hymn by himself and his companions in that dismal place of confinement. People now began to ask who had written the hymn, and the author’s name was easily established by a reference to the magazine.
JUST BEFORE THE BATTLE, MOTHER
Just before the battle, mother,
I am thinking most of you,
While upon the field we’re watching,
With the enemy in view —
Comrades brave are round me lying,
Fill’d with tho’t of home and God;
For well they know that on the morrow,
Some will sleep beneath the sod.
Farewell, mother, you may never
Press me to your heart again;
But oh, you’ll not forget me, mother,
If I’m number’d with the slain.
Oh I long to see you, mother,
And the loving ones at home,
But I’ll never leave our banner
Till in honor I can come.
Tell the traitors all around you
That their cruel words, we know,
In ev’ry battle kill our soldiers
By the help they give the foe.
Hark! I hear the bugles sounding,
’Tis the signal for the fight,
Now may God protect us, mother,
As he ever does the right.
Hear the “Battle Cry of Freedom,”
How it swells upon the air,
Oh, yes, we’ll rally round the standard,
Or we’ll perish nobly there.
– George F. Root.
George F. Root was born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, in 1820. He has perhaps written more popular war songs than any other American. His songs have carried his name to the ends of the earth. He was a musician from childhood. He began as a boy by getting hold of every musical instrument he could find and attempting to master it. When about eighteen years of age, he left his father’s farm in the beautiful Housatonic Valley, and went to Boston to obtain instruction in music, which he had already determined to make his life-work. He was very fortunate in finding employment with a Boston teacher named A. B. Johnson, who also took the young countryman into his own home and manifested the warmest interest in his superior musical gifts. It was not long before young Root became a partner in Mr. Johnson’s school. He was ambitious and industrious, and was soon acting as leader for a number of church choirs. There are several churches in Boston to-day which recall as one of the legends of their history that George F. Root used to lead their music. His reputation as a teacher spread so rapidly that he was sought after to give special instruction in other institutions. Later he went to New York and became the principal of the Abbott Institute.
Mr. Root was not satisfied to make anything less than the best out of himself, and so went to Europe in 1850 and spent a year in special work improving his musical talent. About this time he began writing songs, in which he had success from the start. These won him such wide recognition that Mason and Bradbury, the great musical publishers of that day, secured his aid in the making of church music books. He now retired from the field of teaching and devoted himself to composing music and the holding of great musical conventions.
On the breaking out of the war, Dr. Root was in Chicago, and from that Western center of patriotic fire and enthusiasm he sent forth scores of songs that thrilled the heart of the country. While the Battle Cry of Freedom was perhaps his most famous song, there are a number of others that keep, even to this day, close company with it in popularity. The old veterans who still linger on the scene, as well as those who were but boys and girls in those days, well remember the martial enthusiasm that was evoked by his prison song, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp! The mingled pathos and hopefulness of it has been rarely, if ever, surpassed: —
“In the prison cell I sit,
Thinking, mother dear, of you,
And our bright and happy home so far away,
And the tears they fill my eyes,
Spite of all that I can do,
Tho’ I try to cheer my comrades and be gay.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching,
Cheer up, comrades, they will come,
And beneath the starry flag
We will breathe the air again,
Of the freeland in our own beloved home.
“In the battle front we stood,
When their fiercest charge they made,
And they swept us off a hundred men or more;
But before we reached their lines,
They were beaten back dismayed,
And we heard the cry of vict’ry o’er and o’er.
“So within the prison cell,
We are waiting for the day
That shall come to open wide the iron door,
And the hollow eye grows bright,
And the poor heart almost gay,
As we think of seeing home and friends once more.”
To appreciate the pathos of that song one needs to hear a company of Grand Army Veterans tell about singing it in Andersonville or Libby Prisons.
Just Before the Battle, Mother appealed to the tender side of those who remained at home, and made it a very popular song not only for public gatherings, but in drawing-rooms, and camps in the twilight of the evening. The sequel to it, Just After the Battle, was equally as popular and retains its popularity though a generation has passed away since it was written. It, too, has the vein of optimism in it which runs through all of Doctor Root’s work. Perhaps that is one of the secrets of his great power over the human heart. While he makes us weep with the tenderness of the sentiment, there is always a rainbow on his cloud, a rainbow with promises of a brighter to-morrow. Just After the Battle has that rainbow in it, in the hope expressed by the singer that he shall still see his mother again in the old home: —
“Still upon the field of battle
I am lying, mother dear,
With my wounded comrades waiting
For the morning to appear.
Many sleep to waken never,
In this world of strife and death,
And many more are faintly calling,
With their feeble dying breath.
Mother dear, your boy is wounded,
And the night is drear with pain,
But still I feel that I shall see you,
And the dear old home again.
“Oh, the first great charge was fearful,
And a thousand brave men fell,
Still, amid the dreadful carnage,
I was safe from shot and shell.
So, amid the fatal shower,
I had nearly pass’d the day,
When here the dreaded Minie struck me,
And I sunk amid the fray.
“Oh, the glorious cheer of triumph,
When the foeman turn’d and fled,
Leaving us the field of battle,
Strewn with dying and with dead.
Oh, the torture and the anguish,
That I could not follow on,
But here amid my fallen comrades,
I must wait till morning’s dawn.”
WHEN THIS CRUEL WAR IS OVER
Dearest love, do you remember,
When we last did meet,
How you told me that you lov’d me,
Kneeling at my feet?
Oh! how proud you stood before me,
In your suit of blue,
When you vow’d to me and country
Ever to be true.
Weeping, sad and lonely,
Hopes and fears how vain!
When this cruel war is over,
Praying that we meet again!
When the summer breeze is sighing,
Mournfully along;
Or when autumn leaves are falling,
Sadly breathes the song.
Oft in dreams I see thee lying
On the battle plain,
Lonely, wounded, even dying,
Calling, but in vain.
If amid the din of battle
Nobly you should fall,
Far away from those who love you,
None to hear you call —
Who would whisper words of comfort
Who would soothe your pain?
Ah! the many cruel fancies,
Ever in my brain.
But our country call’d you, darling,
Angels cheer your way;
While our nation’s sons are fighting,
We can only pray.
Nobly strike for God and liberty,
Let all nations see
How we love the starry banner,
Emblem of the free.
– Charles Carroll Sawyer.
Charles Carroll Sawyer was born in Mystic, Connecticut, in 1833. His father, Captain Joshua Sawyer, was an old-fashioned Yankee sea captain. The family moved to New York when Charles was quite young, and he obtained his education in that city. The poetic instinct was marked in his youth, and at the age of twelve he wrote several sonnets which attracted a good deal of attention among his acquaintances. At the breaking out of the war he began to write war songs, and in a few months was recognized everywhere as one of the most successful musical composers of the day. His most popular songs were Who will Care for Mother Now? Mother would Comfort Me, and the one we have selected —When this Cruel War is Over. Each of these three songs named reached a sale of over a million copies before the close of the war, and were sung in almost every mansion and farmhouse and cabin from the Atlantic to the Pacific throughout all the northern part of the Union, as well as in every camp where soldiers waited for battle.
His song, Mother would Comfort Me, was suggested, as indeed were most of his songs, by a war incident. A soldier in one of the New York regiments had been wounded and was taken prisoner at Gettysburg. He was placed in a Southern hospital, and when the doctor told him that nothing more could be done for him, his dying words were: “Mother would comfort me if she were here.” When Sawyer learned of the incident, he wrote the song, the first verse of which runs as follows: —
“Wounded and sorrowful, far from my home,
Sick among strangers, uncared for, unknown;
Even the birds that used sweetly to sing
Are silent, and swiftly have taken the wing.
No one but mother can cheer me to-day,
No one for me could so fervently pray;
None to console me, no kind friend is near —
Mother would comfort me if she were here.”
This song captured the country at once, and spread its author’s fame everywhere.
On another occasion a telegram came to a Brooklyn wife concerning her husband who was killed on the battlefield. The last words of the despatch read: “He was not afraid to die.” Sawyer caught up that note in the telegram, and wrote his splendid song beginning, —
“Like a true and faithful soldier
He obeyed our country’s call;
Vowing to protect its banner
Or in battle proudly fall:
Noble, cheerful, brave and fearless,
When most needed, ever nigh,
Always living as a Christian,
‘He was not afraid to die.’”
Another of his greatest creations found its inspiration in a similar way. During one of the battles, among the many noble men that fell was a young man who had been the only support of an aged and invalid mother for years. Overhearing the doctor tell those who were near him that he could not live, he placed his hands across his forehead, and with a trembling voice said, while burning tears ran down his cheeks: “Who will care for mother, now?” Sawyer took up these words which voiced the generous heart of the dying youth, and made them the title and theme of one of his noblest songs. The first verse is full of pathos, —
“Why am I so weak and weary,
See how faint my heated breath,
All around to me seems darkness,
Tell me, comrades, is this death?
Ah! how well I know your answer;
To my fate I meekly bow,
If you’ll only tell me truly
Who will care for mother now?”
At that time, when every community throughout the North as well as the South had more than one mother whose sole dependence for the future days of weakness and old age was the strong arm of some soldier boy at the front, this song struck a chord that was very tender, and it was sung and whistled and played in street and theater and drawing-room throughout the entire country.
Sawyer’s songs were unique in that they were popular in both armies. They never contained a word of malice, and appealed to the universal human heart. At the close of the war a newspaper published at Milledgeville, Georgia, said of Sawyer’s songs, “His sentiments are fraught with the greatest tenderness, and never one word has he written about the South or the war that could wound the sore chords of a Southern heart.”
The most universally famous of all Sawyer’s songs was When this Cruel War is Over. As the long years of carnage dragged on, the fascination for the glamour and glory of war disappeared, and its horrid cruelty impressed people, North and South, more and more. Loving hearts in the army and at home caught up this song as an appropriate expression of the hunger for peace that was in their souls. A popular Southern song, When upon the Field of Glory, the words of which were written by J. H. Hewitt and the music by H. L. Schreiner, was an answer to this song of Sawyer’s. As it is one of the best of the songs of the Confederacy, it is worth repetition here: —
“When upon the field of glory,
’Mid the battle cry,
And the smoke of cannon curling
Round the mountain high;
Then sweet mem’ries will come o’er me,
Painting home and thee,
Nerving me to deeds of daring,
Struggling to be free.
Weep no longer, dearest,
Tears are now in vain.
When this cruel war is over
We may meet again.
“Oft I think of joys departed,
Oft I think of thee;
When night’s sisters throw around me,
Their star’d canopy.
Dreams so dear come o’er my pillow,
Bringing up the past,
Oh! how sweet the soldier’s visions!
Oh! how short they last!
“When I stand a lonely picket,
Gazing on the moon,
As she walks her starry pathway,
In night’s silent noon;
I will think that thou art looking
On her placid face,
Then our tho’ts will meet together,
In a heav’nly place.
“When the bullet, swiftly flying
Thro’ the murky air,
Hits its mark, my sorrow’d bosom,
Leaving death’s pang there;
Then my tho’ts on thee will turn, love,
While I prostrate lie.
My pale lips shall breathe, ‘God bless thee —
For our cause I die!’
Weep then for me, dearest,
When I’m free from pain;
When this cruel war is over,
In heav’n we’ll meet again.”