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Battle Hymn of the Republic - Later Versions
by Julia Ward Howe
 
 More of This Feature
• First Published Version
• Original Manuscript Version
• About Later Versions
   
 Related Resources
• About Julia Ward Howe  - includes bibliography
• Writing the Battle Hymn
• Beyond the Battle Hymn
• Julia Ward Howe Quotations
• 
Julia Ward Howe: More Resources
• Women and the Civil War
• Harriet Townsend on Julia Ward Howe
• Mother's Day Proclamation, by Julia Ward Howe
• "What Is Religion?" 1893, Julia Ward Howe
• Transcendentalist Women (2)
 What is Transcendentalism?
• Suffrage Resources
• Women and Peace
• Mother's Day Resources
• Katharine Lee Bates - America the Beautiful  
 

Julia Ward Howe about 1865
Julia Ward Howe
about 1865

Portrait from
www.arttoday.com
Used with permission

First published version   Manuscript version

Later Versions

The Battle Hymn has been sung on many public occasions, including at the funeral of Robert F. Kennedy and at the service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., after the September 11, 2001, attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon.

It is common in Protestant hymnals, but there you're likely to see several variations on the words as first published or as first written by Julia Ward Howe in the 1860s.  In the grand tradition of assembling new hymnals to meet a religious group's changing needs, words are changed to make the words more singable, to drop words that are not common in later vocabulary, or to bring the words more in line with that religious group's theology.

Intimations of Julia Ward Howe's 19th century Unitarian Christianity were changed by more orthodox Protestant groups to reflect less her universalistic theology. The 1993 Unitarian Universalist hymn book has dropped the Battle Hymn entirely while including Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation as a unison reading.

Most commonly, the line referring to the commitment of soldiers in the Civil War "As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free" has been changed to "As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free."

In this example, some hymnals use a verse from Howe's original manuscript which was not in the first published version. The word "sucour" has been changed to "honor" in a verse from her original. The "soul of Time" has been changed to "soul of wrong." Pronouns used for God have been capitalized.

Later version:

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.

As first written:

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, he is sucour to the brave,
So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of Time his slave,
Our God is marching on.
 

First published version   Manuscript version

Related links:

  • John Brown's Body: plays several banjo versions of the tune, plus gives several versions of the Union lyrics (warning: music will play at this site)
  • About Julia Ward Howe  - includes bibliography
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