Battle Hymn of the Republic & the amazing history of the song
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/11/the-battle-hymn-of-the-republic-americas-song-of-itself/66070/
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The Battle Hymn of the Republic': America's Song of Itself
The anthem, first published in The Atlantic Monthly 150 years ago, mirrors how the country feels about war
DOMINIC TIERNEY
NOVEMBER 4, 2010
On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to speak in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. "I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land," King announced. "And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man." And then he closed in his lyrical voice: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
The next day he lay dying on the second floor of the Lorraine Motel, struck in the cheek by an assassin's bullet.
SNIP
In April 1968, King quoted the "Battle Hymn," and seemed to know that his life was almost over. Two months later, on June 8, the Requiem Mass for Bobby Kennedy ended with the same song, performed by Andy Williams.
The "Battle Hymn" is the closer: it's the music that concludes great American lives.
The song is bound up with the triptych of assassinations in the 1960s:
John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy.
After JFK died in 1963, Judy Garland sang the "Battle Hymn" on her CBS show as a tribute to her personal friend.
The last line that King ever spoke in public came from a song, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," written by Julia Ward Howe in 1861. It was a fitting finale to the life of a great American because the story of the "Battle Hymn" is the story of the United States. The song, now approaching its 150th anniversary, is a hallowed treasure and a second national anthem. We have turned to it repeatedly in national crises.
The "
Battle Hymn" has inspired suffragists and labor organizers, civil rights leaders and novelistslike John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath.
But most of all, the "
Battle Hymn" is a warrior's cry and a call to arms. Its vivid portrait of sacred violence captures how Americans fight wars, from the minié balls of the Civil War to the shock and awe of Iraq.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/11/the-battle-hymn-of-the-republic-americas-song-of-itself/66070/