LITERATURE AND SONGS

"Battle Hymn of the Republic" (1861)

Commentary

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was a popular marching song among Union troops during the Civil War. Julia Ward Howe (1801–1876) wrote the rousing lyrics in November 1861. She set the words to the tune of a hymn composed by William Steffe around 1856. The tune was already an infantry favorite because of its snappy cadence and soldiers often created their own verses to match its tempo. Howe reportedly heard an obscene version of the song while visiting a Union army encampment and decided to write words more fitting the tune's origin as a hymn. Her "Battle Hymn" was included in Union Army hymnbooks carried by many soldiers. Its religious motif is interlaced with military themes, epitomized in the famous line "As [Christ] died to make men holy, / Let us die to make men free." The song represents the soldiers' adoption of the shift in federal war aims from preserving the Union to ending slavery.

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 loos'd the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

Chorus:

Glory, glory Hallelujah! Glory, glory Hallelujah! Glory, glory Hallelujah! 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 ev'ning dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.

Chorus

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish'd 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.

Chorus

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.

Chorus

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.

Chorus

"Vacant Chair" (1861)

Commentary

George F. Root (1820–1895) wrote the words and music to many of the tunes most popular with Union soldiers and others in the North during the Civil War. Soldiers still sang his "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" nearly a century later. While this song made a less enduring impression, it appealed to both Union and Confederate families. It is representative of the sentimental style of its day, as well as of the very real suffering of so many families who lost men to the battlefield.

We shall meet but we shall miss him,
There will be one vacant chair;
We shall linger to caress him
While we breathe our evening prayer.
When a year ago we gathered,
Joy was in his mild blue eye;
But a golden cord is severed,
And our hopes in ruins lie.

Chorus:

We shall meet but we shall miss him,
There will be one vacant chair;
We shall linger to caress him
While we breathe our evening prayer.

At our fireside sad and lonely,
Often will the bosom swell
At remembrance of the story
How our noble soldier fell;
How he strove to bear our banner
Through the thickest of the fight
And uphold our country's honor
In the strength of manhood's might.

Chorus

"New Colossus" (1883)

Source: Lazarus, Emma. The Poems of Emma Lazarus. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1889.

Commentary

Her first book, published when she was not yet eighteen years old, earned Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson and other eminent writers. In addition to her writings, she became active on behalf of Russian Jews in 1882, supporting the Zionist cause as well as working with immigrants in New York City. Her devotion to refugees fueled this, her most famous poem. It was auctioned along with contributions from Longfellow, Whitman, and Twain in an 1883 effort to raise funds for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Years after Lazarus's death at age thirty-eight, a campaign by one of her friends resulted in a bronze plaque inscribed with its text being mounted on the statue's base in 1903. Over the years it has been set to music and memorized by generations of school children.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost tome,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"