Battle Hymn of the Republic

In the fall of 1860, newly elected President Abraham Lincoln had the difficult task of trying to unite a dividing country. Convictions about slavery in the South weighed heavily on the nation. On April 12, 1861 civil war officially struck the nation when Confederate troops attacked Fort Sumter, South Carolina, beginning the United States Civil War. This four-year-long war not only divided the nation, it divided families and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

A year after being elected, President Lincoln led a group of abolitionists—people trying to end slavery—through a Union Army camp just outside Washington D.C. Among the group were Julia Ward Howe and her husband Samuel Howe. The Boston couple raised six children and dedicated themselves to the abolitionist movement, publishing the newspaper The Commonwealth. Mrs. Howe was self-educated and fluent in seven languages. She wrote several poems and plays, often doing her best writing in a darkened room after putting her young children to bed. Her writings gained national attention.

On the day of the Howes’ visit, Union troops marched through singing the familiar tune we know as “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with very different lyrics. As the troops passed by Mrs. Howe, her husband, andReverend James Freeman Clark. Clarke, having known of Mrs. Howe’s poetry, encouraged her to write new lyrics for the tune.