America's Most Famous Battle Hymn

By Bart Anderson

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and The Battle Hymn of the Republic seem to go hand in hand. It is perhaps the best known Mormon Tabernacle Choir song. “The mightiest of our war songs is John Brown’s Body ennobled into The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” asserts a well-known writer on music. This one battle hymn seems to stand in a class of its own.

To have written such a deeply moving poem is glory and greatness enough for anyone, but, aside from this accomplishment, Julia Ward Howe was one of the most notable and gifted women our country has ever produced. When Brown University conferred upon her the honorary degree of Doctors of Letters, toward the end of her long, active and productive life, she was formally characterized in the citation as “author, philanthropist, mother, friend of the slave, the pioneer of all those who suffer, singer of the Battle Hymn of freedom.”

Her husband and she were inspecting troops after a battle. As the sea of weary, forlorn soldiers filed by her on the road, with a well trained, clear voice, she sang patriotic songs. It was at this time that her husband turned to his wife and said. “Why don’t you write some good words for that stirring tune (John Brown’s Body), words worthy of it, and worthy of our soldiers?” “And so,” she later admitted, “to pacify my dear husband, I promised to try.”
Either that promise or the tune the marching soldiers made a such a deep impression on Mrs. Howe’s mind that, she was awakened before dawn. She found herself attempting to give form and shape to shadowy words that might possibly be sung to the John Brown’s Body music. She couldn’t believe how line after line swiftly molded itself in her brain. She therefore sprang hastily out of bed and groped around in the dim gray light until she found a pen and paper. Having completed the writing, she returned to bed and fell asleep.

In the course of the year 1862, the poem was widely reprinted, with her name as author. It became, in fact, the poem of the hour, and before long the great Union armies were marching to its stanzas, which had finally replaced the words of John Brown’s Body and given dignity to the well known tune.

Julia Ward Howe was not content to rest on the well deserved fame that the song brought her. In the after-war years of her long life she threw herself into a multitude of activities which were to make her one of the truly great and productive American women. She spent time lecturing as a feminist and social reformer. In her old age she became a kind of American institution, a lady of first rank.

One characterization of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” appears fittingly to summarize the power of this matchless song: “This soul-inspiring poem was the incarnation of patriotism. It was struck out of the white heat of unconscious inspiration,.. the soul’s product of a mighty moment. It is the most resonant and elevating of all American battle hymns,” and a fitting song to be associated with the Tabernacle Choir.”