“Time and again, around the camp-fires scattered at night over some open field, when the Army of the Potomac—or a portion of it—was on the march, have I heard the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’—generally, however, the first verse only, but in endless repetition—sung in unison by hundreds of voices—occasions more impressive than that of any oratorio sung by any musical troupe in some great assembly-room. And I remember how, one night in the small hours, returning to Washington from the front, by Government steamer up the Potomac, with a party of ‘San. Com.’ colleagues and Army officers, mostly surgeons, we found our horses awaiting us at the Seventh Street dock; and how, mounting them, we galloped all the long distance to our quarters, singing the ‘Battle Hymn’—this time the whole of it—at the top of our voices.”
VI
NOTABLE OCCASIONS WHERE IT HAS BEEN SUNG
By great crowds in the street after Union victories in the Civil War—On the downfall of Boss Croker—At Memorial Day celebrations from the Atlantic to the Pacific—At the Chicago convention where the General Federation of Women’s Clubs indorsed woman suffrage—At Brown University and Smith College when Mrs. Howe received the degree of LL.D.
“THE Battle Hymn of the Republic” has been sung and recited thousands of times, by all sorts of people under widely varying circumstances, yet the key-note of it is most fitly struck when men and women are lifted out of themselves by the power of strong emotion. In times of danger and of thanksgiving the “Battle Hymn” is now, as it was in the ’sixties, the fitting vehicle for the expression of national feeling. Indeed, it has been so used in other countries as well as in our own. In my mother’s journal the entry often occurs, “They sang my ‘Battle Hymn.’” Usually she makes no comment.
It would, of course, be impossible and it might be tedious to rehearse all the notable occasions where this national song has been given. Yet many of them have been so full of interest as to demand a place in the story of the “Battle Hymn.” The record would be incomplete without them. I give a few which will serve as samples.
In New York City there was a good deal of disloyal sentiment during the Civil War. Here the draft riots took place in the summer of 1863, when the guns from the battle of Gettysburg were rushed to the metropolis. Here the cannon, their wheels still deeply incrusted with mud, were drawn up, a grim reminder to the rioters of the actual meaning of war. To these the sight of a uniform was odious. My husband, David Prescott Hall, then a young lad returning from a summer camping trip, was chased through the streets by some excited individuals. As he had a knapsack on his back, they mistook him for a soldier.
It need scarcely be said that New York City had also a large loyal population. In the early days of the war men suspected of secession sympathies were visited by deputations of citizens who insisted upon their displaying the flag. They found it wiser to do so. After one of the final victories of the war, perhaps the taking of Richmond, a great crowd gathered before the bulletin-board of a New York newspaper. Some one started to sing the “Battle Hymn” and the whole mass of people took it up, “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!” What else could so well have expressed the joy and thanksgiving of our people, weary of four long years of fratricidal war! My husband, who was present, described the scene as being most impressive.
F. B. Sanborn in his Early History of Kansas tells us an interesting story of the singing of the “Battle Hymn” on a very different occasion.
“People were gathered together to hear a sermon from Col. James Montgomery, a man of undaunted courage and a veteran both of the Civil War and of the Kansas struggle. The place was Trading Post, where, during the Kansas troubles, some fourteen years before this time, a massacre had been perpetrated. Among his audience were survivors and relatives of the slain. There were present, too, a score of men who had ‘shouted amen when their renowned leader registered his vow that the blood of the dead and the tears of the widows and children should not be shed in vain.’ Montgomery was of the indomitable Scotch-Irish blood, tall and slender, with a shaggy shock of long black hair and even shaggier whiskers.
“As he arose to begin the services and fixed his gaze on the familiar faces of those who had suffered and whose sufferings he had so fully avenged, a gleam of joy and satisfaction seemed to blaze from his penetrating eyes and thrilled the audience into perfect accord. He hesitated a moment, and then requested all to arise and sing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’ The noble thought of that grand hymn stirred the crowd to the deepest depths of feeling. The text was in keeping with the occasion: