The road to finalizing the lyrics to the song now celebrated as the Battle Hymn of the Republic contains several twists and turns and was nearly a half-century in the making.
The tune of “Glory, glory, Hallelujah” can be traced back to the mountains of Appalachia in the early days of the 1800s.
There, in the hills and hollers of the Southeastern United States, Methodist and Baptist circuit riders would often lead congregations in one of the most beloved camp meeting hymns of the era, known as Canaan’s Happy Shore (song to the familiar tune of Glory, glory, Hallelujah):
O HASTE away my brethren dear, And come to Canaan’s shore;
We will meet and sing for ever there, When all our toils are o’er;
O that will be joyful, joyful, joyful,
O that will be joyful!
To meet to part no more, To meet to part no more,
On Canaan’s happy shore.
And then sing Hallelujah, With the friends who’ve gone before
On Canaan’s happy shore.
Oh! Brothers will you meet me on Canaan’s happy shore?
Oh! Brothers will you meet me on Canaan’s happy shore?
Oh! Brothers will you meet me on Canaan’s happy shore?
There we’ll shout and give him glory, for glory is His own.
There we’ll shout and give him glory, for glory is His own.
There we’ll shout and give him glory, for glory is His own.
Over the decades that followed, local congregations and varying pastors fine-tuned the hymn’s words, editing to allow for greater flow and better rhythm.
By the 1850s, the song’s most well-known line had been added: “Glory, glory, Hallelujah”, replacing “There we’ll shout and give him glory, for glory is His own.”
In October 1859, Connecticut-born abolitionist John Brown seized an armory in Virginia with a plan of arming and freeing slaves. Brown was captured, put on trial for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia and hanged for his actions.
Throughout the South, his death was largely seen as justice and viewed favorably, but in the North, he became a martyr for the cause of ending slavery.
By May 1861, one month following the beginning of the American Civil War, soldiers serving in the Massachusetts Militia had changed the lyrics of the Southern camp meeting hymn into one referencing the current state of affairs in the nation:
First Verse
John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave,
John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave
John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave
His soul is marching on!
Chorus
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on!
Second Verse
He’s gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord x3
His soul is marching on!
Third Verse
John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back x3
His soul is marching on!
Fourth Verse
His pet lambs will meet him on the way x3
They go marching on!
Fifth Verse
They will hang Jeff Davis to a tree! x3
As they march along!
Sixth Verse
Now, three rousing cheers for the Union! x3
As we are marching on!
As the Civil war drug on through 1861, the South made Dixie their anthem, while the Yankee army sang the above-recorded words to The John Brown Song.
In November 1861, New York City born poet and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe was visiting Washington, DC, when she heard Company K of the 6th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry singing these songs.
Howe’s companion on the trip, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, suggested to Howe that the song’s tune was lovely, but that the words could use changing – apparently, he wasn’t a big fan of lines such as John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave or They will hang Jeff Davis to a tree!
Of the writing of the lyrics, Howe remembered:
“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 pencil which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”
The Battle Hymn of the Republic was written and would be first published on the front page of The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862.
First published version:
First Verse
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.
Chorus
Glory, Glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
Second Verse
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.
Third Verse
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.
Fourth Verse
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.
Fifth Verse
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.
NOTE: Many modern recordings of the Battle Hymn of the Republic use the lyric “As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free” as opposed to the lyric originally written by Julia Ward Howe: “let us die to make men free.”
Though written during the War of 1812, the United States did not formally select The Star-Spangled Banner to serve as the national anthem until 1931. During the debate to name a national anthem, there were many who advocated for the Battle Hymn of the Republic to be the National Anthem of the United States.
“No single influence,” said US Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, “has had so much to do with shaping the destiny of a nation – as nothing more surely expresses national character – than what is the national anthem… 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 that transfigures you and me. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.”
