The Battle Hymn of the Republic

[Pythagorean]

by Julia Ward Howe

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.




The Atlantic Monthly; February 1862; The Battle Hymn of the Republic; Volume 9, No. 52; page 10.

[Fido]

Is it possible you got the second line a little wrong?

[Pythagorean]

Hi, Fido!! How are you?

The words as published in the February, 1862, issue of The Atlantic Monthly are slightly different from her original manuscript version as documented in her Reminiscences 1819-1899, published in 1899. Later versions have been adapted to more modern usage and to the theological inclinations of the groups using the song.

So that probably explains the discepancy.

[Fido]

Some of my people fought in that war, and I can never hear that song without a tear coming to my eyes. What carnage and waste for so little gain. But when you hear Oh Suzanna and realize what a cry for pity it is, since the life expectancy of a slave in the gulf states was less than ten years, then you can grasp once more what carnage and waste was slavery. And all for nothing since the middle men, the bankers and their kind took every bit of profit out of the process, leaving pretense for the slave owner, and pain for the slave.

[Didymos Thomas]

Didn't help that the carpet baggers were happy to buy up and tear down every bit of what was left of the south's economy after the war. The old money families, as always, got on just fine. It was the poor and middle class who suffered.

Of course, those in bondage were no better off after the war. For all the hopes a dreams of slaves and abolitionists, the country still needed a hundred years.

Foolhardy, southern, Constitutional delegates!

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

Didn't help that the carpet baggers were happy to buy up and tear down every bit of what was left of the south's economy after the war. The old money families, as always, got on just fine. It was the poor and middle class who suffered.

Of course, those in bondage were no better off after the war. For all the hopes a dreams of slaves and abolitionists, the country still needed a hundred years.

Foolhardy, southern, Constitutional delegates!

Their economy was **** before the war.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by Fido

Their economy was **** before the war.

True. By the time of the war the only people benefitting from slavery was a tiny aristocracy in the south; the rest of the south was collapsing because of it.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Aedes

True. By the time of the war the only people benefitting from slavery was a tiny aristocracy in the south; the rest of the south was collapsing because of it.

I'm not really sure about that. My guess is that they thought they could make money if they could get the yankee traders of their backs; but I think the middle men had the money squeezed right out of slavery. I have heard that New York considered ceceding briefly, but how could a whole state let wall street wag their tail? Combine the bankrupt condition of the South with the fact that slavery robbed labor of its honor, and you have the facts as Lincoln saw them: that the South is not a place for a poor white man to remove to, but to remove from. So, when everyone one was talking free land, it was for all the poor whites who could not compete with slavery, and had too much honor to try. In one sense at least the South had the perfect defense. Since they had no infrastructure they had no infrastructure to be turned against them. As some in the North noted: Poor morals equal poor roads. Is it not still true today?

[Didymos Thomas]

As some in the North noted: Poor morals equal poor roads. Is it not still true today?

It wasn't true then. Neither the southern, nor northern states could possibly claim moral superiority and make any sense.

Unless, of course, you're convinced the war was about slavery.

[Fido]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

It wasn't true then. Neither the southern, nor northern states could possibly claim moral superiority and make any sense.

Unless, of course, you're convinced the war was about slavery.

It was about many things, perhaps it was about as many things as lives it destroyed. But it began destroying lives long before anyone considered it in the light of national morality. I do want you to know that the North most certainly made the moral argument against the South; and the South took great offense. In reality, Lincoln was right long before that we were a house divided, and would be slave or free, but not both. Slavery was such that it had to grow or it was bound to fail. It was a simple matter of economics whether the free people of american would submit to the yoke. Now this people has decided to submit to slavery so long as they are free to identify with their masters. That will make slavery endurable.