The Civil War: Activity 10 – HIS 315k External

Civil War in Popular Culture

History Through…

…Song: “John Brown’s Body”, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, and “Solidarity Forever”

It is among the most famous tunes in all of American history. The song originated in pre-Civil War religious revivalism, with the melody of the Methodist camp-meeting favorite, “Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us.”

During the Civil War, it became the most famous marching song and war anthem. Union soldiers in the Civil War then turned it into “John Brown’s Body.”

Julia Ward Howe, uncomfortable with John Brown’s violent assault on slavery, wrote the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Using intense apocalyptic and millenarian imagery drawn from the Biblical book of Revelation, she captured the popular enthusiasm of the time, the sense of a climactic battle between good and evil.

Yet the “Battle Hymn” made no reference to a particular time or place, allowing it to be adapted to new conflicts, including labor radicalism and the civil rights movement.

In 1915, Ralph Chaplin, a writer and labor activist, wrote new words to the tune of “John Brown’s Body” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Chaplin’s song, “Solidarity Forever,” would become the anthem of the American labor movement.

Revelation

“Then another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has power over fire, and he called with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, “Put in your sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.” So the angel swung his sickle on the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God.” (Revelation 14:18-19)

“And from His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may smite the nations; and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty” (Revelation 19:15)

Canaan’s Happy Shore or Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us?

Say brothers, will you meet us?

On Canaan’s happy shore?

Glory, glory hallelujah!

For ever, evermore!

O Father, will you meet me?

Oh, fathers, will you meet me?

Oh, fathers, will you meet me

On Canaan’s happy shore?

By the grace of God I’ll meet you,

By the grace of God I’ll meet you

On Canaan’s happy shore.

There we’ll shout and give him glory,

For glory is his own.

John Brown’s Body

John Brown’s body lies a-mold’ring in the grave

His soul goes marching on

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

His soul is marching on

He captured Harper’s Ferry with his nineteen men so true

He frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through

They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew

His soul is marching on

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

His soul is marching on

John Brown died that the slave might be free,

But his soul is marching on!

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

His soul is marching on

The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down

On the grave of old John Brown

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

His soul is marching on.

Battle Hymn of the Republic

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.

Chorus:

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 evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

Chorus:

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

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.”

Chorus:

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

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.

Chorus:

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

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.

Chorus:

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

While God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,

He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,

So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,

Our God is marching on.

Chorus:

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.

Marching Song of the First Arkansas

Oh, we’re the bully soldiers of the “First of Arkansas,”

We are fighting for the Union, we are fighting for the law,

We can hit a Rebel further than a white man ever saw,

As we go marching on.

Chorus:

Glory, glory hallelujah.

As we go marching on.

See, there above the center, where the flag is waving bright,

We are going out of slavery; we’re bound for freedom’s light;

We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight,

Chorus: As we go marching on!

We have done with hoeing cotton, we have done with hoeing corn,

We are colored Yankee soldiers, now, as sure as you are born;

When the masters hear us yelling, they’ll think it’s Gabriel’s horn,

Chorus: As we go marching on.

They will have to pay us wages, the wages of their sin,

They will have to bow their foreheads to their colored kith and kin,

They will have to give us house-room, or the roof shall tumble in!

Chorus: As we go marching on.

We heard the Proclamation, master hush it as he will,

The bird he sing it to us, hoppin’ on the cotton hill,

And the possum up the gum tree, he couldn’t keep it still,

Chorus: As he went climbing on.

They said, “Now colored brethren, you shall be forever free,

From the first of January, Eighteen hundred sixty-three.”

We heard it in the river going rushing to the sea,

As it went sounding on. (Chorus)

Father Abraham has spoken and the message has been sent,

The prison doors he opened, and out the pris’ners went,

To join the sable army of “African descent,”

Chorus: As we go marching on.

8. Then fall in, colored brethren, you’d better do it soon,

Don’t you hear the drum a-beating the Yankee Doodle tune?

We are with you now this morning, we’ll be far away at noon,

As we go marching on. (Chorus)

John Brown died on a scaffold for the slave,

Dark was the hour when we dug his hallowed grave;

Now God avenges the life he gladly gave,

Freedom reigns today.

Chorus:

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave;

John Brown lives in the triumphs of the brave;

John Brown’s soul not a higher joy can crave—Freedom reigns today!

Solidarity Forever

When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run,

There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;

Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,

But the union makes us strong.

Chorus:

Solidarity forever,

For the union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,

Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?

Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?

For the union makes us strong.

Chorus:

It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;

Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;

Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;

But the union makes us strong.

Concluding Thoughts

The nineteenth century marked a crucial stage in the process of nation-building. Older nations, like France or Spain, which consisted of loosely connected regions with their own dialects and even languages, became unified nation states over the course of the nineteenth century, with a single national language. Some nations, like Greece, achieved national independence, while Germany and Italy became unified nations for the first time.

The United States was distinctive in the way it achieved national unity: as a result of a bloody civil war. A shift in language reveals a deeper shift in attitudes. Prior to the war, Americans spoke of the United States in the plural. After the war, the United States was described in the singular. The United States is as opposed to The United States are.

To be sure, even after the Civil War, the United States retained a relatively weak central government. But the war removed the biggest impediment to the consolidation of the national economy. Before the war, the South had criticized industrialization, urbanization, and large-scale immigration as un-American. Southern critiques of Northern “wage slavery” put many Northern advocates of economic modernization on the defensive.

Following the war, however, industrialization was viewed not only as inevitable but as a positive good. Obstacles to economic consolidation were removed. The older Hamiltonian vision— of a protective tariff, government incentives for building a transportation infrastructure, federal support for a system of land-grant universities, and a uniform national currency—was instituted. Immigration was encouraged to provide labor for industry, build infrastructure, and populate the West. Native Americans across the Trans-Mississippi West were confined to reservations, opening most of the West to settlement and exploitation.

A new epoch in U.S. history had begun.