"Battle Hymn of the Republic"

[David Lockmiller]

Recognize That Tune? It’s the Northern Accent of Georgia Football

New York Times By MARC TRACY JAN. 8, 2018

For lifelong Georgia fans, it is simply their fight song. On Monday night in Atlanta, it will represent nothing more than the Bulldogs’ aspirations to defeat the Crimson Tide and claim the national championship.

In the spring of 1861, the soldiers of a Boston-based Union regiment pinned the tune to the lyrics: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave/His soul is marching on.” It was an ode to the man who was hanged for raiding the Harpers Ferry Armory in protest of slavery not two years earlier.

Julia Ward Howe, a well-to-do Northern abolitionist and poet, heard the tune that autumn while observing Union troops in Virginia. She decided to prettify (apparently, this is a real word with an obvious meaning) the lyrics, which had expanded to include such lines as, “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree.”

She wrote five verses — beginning with the famous “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord” — and submitted them to The Atlantic Monthly. The poetry editor published them in the February 1862 issue under the title “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The lyrics became extremely popular — Abraham Lincoln praised them — and remained widely known after the war had ended.