THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

The Battle Hymn of the Republic' What It Really Means

'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' What It Really Means

By Michael Dan Jones

One of the most enduring traditional American hymns and patriotic songs is Julia Ward Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." It is a staple with many Christian church choirs and hardly a patriotic holiday passes without this song being sung and played at ceremonies nationwide. But is "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" truly appropriate for religious hymnals and patriotic ceremonies? Who was the author? What motivated and inspired her? What message was she trying to convey? What do the words mean? What meaning do they have for us today?

The author, Julia Ward Howe, was born in 1819 in New York City. She married a prominent physician, Dr. Samuel Howe Gridley (1801-1876) in 1843 and they lived in Boston, Mass. Where they raised five children. She was a much celebrated author, a tireless supporter of the anti-slavery movement, preached in Unitarian churches, and was a zealous worker for the advancement of women, prison reform, world peace and other humanitarian movements. She died 17 October 1910, at her summer home in Oak Glen, Rhode Island.

News reporters of her day delighted in describing this unusual woman. She was diminutive in stature, barely over five feet; invariably wearing a white trimmed, black dress and lace cap and had the habit of peering over her silver-rimmed glasses as she read her lecture in a crisp Boston-Yankee accent.

But her literary works had dark themes, such as murder, suicide and betrayal, perhaps reflecting her own unhappy marriage with her domineering and unfaithful husband. Her church, the Unitarian Church, although it claimed to be Christian, denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

And although she was devoted to the anti-slavery movement, like many other Northern radicals of her time, such as Abraham Lincoln, her own words reveal her to be a hypocrite on the subject of race. Julia Ward Howe believed and wrote the "ideal negro" would be one "refined by white culture, elevated by white blood." She also wrote, "the negro among negroes, is coarse, grinning, flat-footed, thick-skulled creature, ugly as Caliban, lazy as the laziest brutes, chiefly ambitious to be of no use to any in the world. . . He must go to school to the white race and his discipline must be long and laborious." Her own disgusting words expose the kind of hypocrisy that was rampant in the abolitionist movement.

Mrs. Howe and her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, were supporters of the most radical and violent wing of the anti-slavery movement. These "disunion abolitionists" wanted to tear apart the American republic of sovereign, independent states, and reconstruct it along their own radical political, cultural and religious ideals. History records only how too well they succeeded with their treason.

Her husband and her pastor, Unitarian Rev. Theodore Parker, were conspirators in the treasonous group known as "The Secret Six." These wealthy Northeasterners financially supported terrorist and murderer John Brown in his insane Harpers Ferry raid, and advocated slave rebellion that would destroy the original American republic.

Brown's Anti-Southern terror campaign started in Kansas in the mid-1850s. There, on 23 May 1856, Brown and his murderous band descended on a settlement of Southerners at Pottawatomie Creek. They carried with them newly sharpened swords — an image that played a prominent part in Mrs. Howe's song. Her hero and his fellow terrorists literally hacked to death five innocent men. Northern historians try to excuse this crime by saying Brown was exacting revenge for atrocities committed by pro-slavery "Border Ruffians." This is a lie!

The first three of his victims, James P. Doyle and his sons, Drury and William, were Catholics from Tennessee who moved to Kansas to get away from slavery. They never had a thing to do with the institution. But because they spoke with a Southern drawl, and possibly because they were Catholic, Brown marched them to a clearing where their heads were split open with the sharpened swords. Drury's arms were chopped off. Mrs. Doyle was later asked why her husband and sons had been so brutally murdered? She replied, "just we were southern people, I reckon."