Today marks the 190th birth anniversary of American composer, writer, and social reformer Julia Ward Howe. She was not only known for her insightful essays and poems but was a prominent abolitionist, an advocate for Mother's Day, an early proponent of the women-suffrage movement and the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
After witnessing the vicissitudes experienced by Union soldiers near Washington, D.C., she was inspired to write the poem The Battle Hymn of the Republic. It was published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862 and was sung to the melody of the familiar song "John Brown's Body". This song which became one of the most famous and memorable songs of the Civil War period, evolved into an enduring patriotic anthem.
Here is her original version of it:
"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.
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.
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."
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.
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."
