Postwar literature, poetry, and news were everywhere emphasizing the suffering of soldiers.  Yet, women’s pain and suffering sat on the backburners, useless with very few ears to listen in order to cleanse.

However, that changed, as Fahs points out, wherein she says, “But only Julia Ward Howe’s series Songs of the War might have been expected to jog readers’ memories that Northern women’s war experiences had once been richly represented in the popular literature of war.”  

So Howe’s efforts as a women’s activist set the stage for the female voice to be heard.

Going back to 1861, Howe accompanied her husband on a trip to Washington, D.C. to deliver goods to a war camp.  While she was there, she heard the soldiers singing “John Brown’s Body,” which was a marching song the Union soldiers created to try and keep their spirits up.  

The clergyman at the camp recognized Julia and asked her to write a more inspiring and hopeful hymn for the soldiers.  That same evening in her hotel, she wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which was published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862.  

It became the “national anthem” for the Union army and was used in the anti-slavery and suffrage movements (Bio.).  The “Battle Hymn” is an inspiring and hopeful poem that is filled with religious apocalyptic fervor, American patriotism, and, most importantly, egalitarian language for which America is supposed to stand.

However, over the years, the “Battle Hymn” has been changed, important sentences and even stanzas left out due to objections by many religious groups.  

For instance, the third stanza of the “Battle Hymn” has been completely taken out which reads as follows:

“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.” (Negri 1)

This stanza was not included because it was too liberal, spoke to the recognition of women, as well as the freedom for slaves, and was too Unitarian.  

For instance, the third line of the stanza, “Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel” (1) speaks to both the Heros (North) crushing the serpent (South), yet, as a woman’s activist, this sentence seems to elude to the fact that it is time to stand up, not only for the rights of slaves but women as well by crushing the punishment put on Eve and redeem women to have equality, as is the fight for the slaves.

Shira Wolosky suggests that “The Hero ‘born of woman’ reminds us, perhaps, that the sex said to have brought sin into the world will also bring its redemption” (196).  So, however the reader interprets this line, there is probably an intent to express the feminist side to the song.

Wolosky continues this theme by stating that, “The beauty of the lilies where Christ was born may also imply some feminization” (196).

Howe’s intention with that line may also allude to Wolosky’s interpretation of Lydia Sigourney’s “The Ark and Dove” where she says that “Christ is the ultimate redeemer.  Yet, as pitying, gentle guide, he appears more as Mother than male” (195).

However, the hands of patriarchy and tyranny won again, and some of the meaning of the song was lost.  

Despite the many obliterations to her original poem, the spirit of what she wanted to express is within it.  The song is still loved and cherished by America today, sung at concerts, presidential speeches, and churches both North and South; therefore, the essence of egalitarianism that Howe had in mind clearly made its impact on America.

Julia Ward Howe is one of America’s great foremothers.  She worked hard toward the goals of abolition, women’s rights, and a sense of unity and peace in America.  

Her efforts in helping women get recognized for their own pain and suffering and what they had to give up to make the war a success for the North were unprecedented.  Through her prolific writing career as a poet, hymnist, novelist, playwright, and essayist, she helped to shape America into the somewhat liberal country it is today.

However, the “Battle Hymn” is her legacy written through her passion and creative mind in one short evening in a hotel room.  

She created an anthem that all Americans love and cherish, even in the South, and that stands the test of time in representing what America really and truly stands for. Perhaps someone today could provide us with a song that could once again unite us all.

Listen to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”