More Than You Ever Wanted to Know about "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"

I had originally just planned on leaving a comment on Lois' post on "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," but I fell into a research rabbit hole and had to write my own research paper post!

The original song/tune was "John Brown's Body," as Lois said, and it was composed by a group of Union soldiers together. In 1890, The New England Magazine published this account of its composition. You can read that in full here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EL1OuHnoMgESzOhPiLGajKZ0OBrS4uJU/view?usp=sharing. It's pretty funny!

However, it seems that the tune of "John Brown's Body" had an even earlier version: "Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us, which you can learn about here: http://www.stephengriffith.com/folksongindex/say-brothers-will-you-meet-us/." 

Here's the "tl;dr" version of the Civil War lyrics' origin from NPR: 

A quick bit of history: It's the middle of the Civil War. Union soldiers are sitting around a campfire, goofing off, singing songs — and they're ribbing on this one guy. "One of the members of the singing group is a Scottish immigrant named John Brown," Harvard professor John Stauffer says.

To be clear, he's not talking about the famous abolitionist, who was executed before the war even began; this John Brown was just a regular soldier. Stauffer, who co-authored the book The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song that Marches On, says the soldiers were making up new lyrics to the tune of an old hymn, "Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us."

"So when they start making up songs to pass the time, comrades needle him and say, 'You can't be John Brown — John Brown's dead.' And then another soldier would add, 'His body's moulderin' in the grave,' " Stauffer explains. Though their impromptu rewrite was inspired by a regular soldier, the ghost of the abolitionist loomed large — and a marching song called "John Brown's Body" was born.

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/04/625351953/one-song-glory 

The tune had real promise as pro-Union, abolitionist march, but many non-soldiers thought it was too vulgar or disturbing, and there were a few attempts to write more appropriate and patriotic lyrics to fit the tune.

Julia Ward Howe heard it sung during a public review of troops in Upton Hill, VA. In 1899, she wrote about her burst of creative inspiration the night after the review:

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.

I love that she specifically describes these "stanzas" and "verses" as a "poem," rather than as song lyrics.

As Lois said in her post, Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862, on the front page!

Over the ensuing one-and-a-half centuries, the song has had MANY parodies (the one I partially remember includes "he was driving in a Ford"), but one of it's most famous offsprings is "Solidarity Forever," a trade union anthem.

The lyrics to "Solidarity Forever" were written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915, originally for the Industrial Workers of the World, but other major unions like the AFL-CIO adopted it, and it's been performed by musicians like Leonard Cohen and Peet Seeger. You've heard the Peet Seeger version if you've ever watched the 2014 movie Pride.

My brother, who double majored in political science and community studies and who now works for a Congresswoman who shall remain nameless (and is currently sitting across from me apologetically explaining "economic compacting" to a constituent on the phone as he winds up his sixth 12-plus-hour workday in a row), told me this story about "Solidarity Forever" and other union songs:

Apparently, during certain union strikes, bosses would hire Salvation Army bands to play "patriotic" music in order to drown out the shouting union members, so that passersby wouldn't hear their complaints and demands. By singing to the tunes of the "patriotic" music, the workers could take back the power and use the music to amplify rather than overwrite their message.

In 1968, over 50 years after he first composed the lyrics, Ralph Chaplin wrote a long essay about "Solidarity Forever" and its cultural context, which you can read here: https://www.iww.org/history/icons/solidarity_forever/1

And if you are interested in comic parodies, boy do I have news for you. Mark Twain wrote one in the wake of the Philipine-American War, called "Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated" and it's perfect:

Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger's wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps—
His night is marching on.

I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!"

We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!

In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom—and for others' goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich—
Our god is marching on.

Pretty intense, huh? Well, that's about as much trivia as you might ever need to know about "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to get you through a particularly rousing pub trivia night.

And if you think maybe Mark Twain had the right idea, you might want to learn a bit more about what unions do and maybe how to join or form one, because it turns out there's a union for just about every job under the sun. ;)

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