It's Right There in the Name
Aux Armes, Muh-Fuh
It was written by Julia Ward Howe in November, 1861. She got $4.00 for it — a sum then good for four shots of Kentucky bourbon.* It was made famous when President Lincoln, after hearing it sung for the first time, stood up, asked to hear it again, and remained standing. From there, its impact grew until it became the unofficial anthem of the Union itself. Even so, today it’s mostly used as a song for high school chorales to perform before their assembled parents. As a standard part of the American catalog, it can be found up there with “John Brown’s Body” (the melody from which it loosely borrows), “Shenandoah” and “Simple Gifts.”
But it’s something more than these are.
As anyone who’s seen “Casablanca” well knows, “La Marseillaise” makes for a better call to arms. While it rings out for citizen soldiers to arise and “formez vos bataillons,” our fight-song is busily making wine. Not that it’s all like that, for right after the grapes of wrath are pressed and the Lord’s “terrible swift sword” is loosed, its fateful lightning is presumably there to strike slaving “contemners” in dreadful retribution. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Johnny Reb when that happens. So, while it isn’t fashionably French, may be weighed down by 19th-century lyrics and would be less likely to silence a bunch of Wehrmacht officers in a Casablanca café -- it still knows how to fight. Besides, as anyone who’s seen “Gettysburg,” or better yet — “Red Dawn” — is aware, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is our call to arms.
It’s right there in the name.
As a strongly Victorian work the Battle Hymn is replete with references to God. As such, it’s an easy matter to consider it sacred. However, the song’s job is primarily to act as a nobly warring and nationalistic opus. Lit by a gentle watchfire, it evokes more of the Samuri warrior’s quiescent spirit than the embattled farmer’s rage. Perhaps this is the very reason why, despite its calling upon “the hero born of woman (to) crush the serpent with his heel” (Johnny Reb again), it’s still seen by most of us as just a baronial-sounding bit of patriotic fluff.
Despite its glorious description of an unmatched history of valor in the face of overwhelming odds, a lot of Americans view “The Star-Spangled Banner” with disdain. That’s because, well, America. For these folks, it’s “America the Beautiful” that should’ve been played as the TV signed off every night. But I call BS. Sure, “America” (its other name) deserves praise for its rare invocation of the American landscape’s splendor; but although admittedly more “singable,” it isn’t our national anthem any more than “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is.
Beginning when the National Football League announced that it would be played at the opening of all games during the 2020 season, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was foisted on us as the Black National Anthem with all the subtlety of a North Korean military parade. While it’s indeed a beautiful -- and even inspirational – work that extends back to 1900, you don’t hear Lift Every Voice as athletes no longer Bend Every Knee in pre-game displays of shame for the “dark past” to which the song alludes. Ironically, these shows of virtue would also take place while what inference compels us to regard as the White National Anthem plays.
Way to unify, future bug-eaters.
Ironically too, it’s the Lift Every Voice crowd that may have put kibosh on “America.” Once the unofficial White Liberal National Anthem, “America’s” lyrics famously end up crowning the country’s “good” with “brotherhood” -- a coronation that’s somehow hard to visualize. Never mind that the Battle Hymn of the Republic calls on us to sacrifice our very lives in the abolition of slavery, it’s “America’s” pious reference to brotherhood that’s earned it politically approved hosannas among those in Malibu, on Martha’s Vineyard and along other soy-popping strongholds with frontage on a shining sea. However, this reference has lately become problematic. In certain quarters, its elevation of brotherhood has made “America” a patriarchal Horst Wessel Song among Wokeism’s dying breed. Sung in violation of Code Pink’s ideological redline, it’s become as toxic as masculinity itself for those who once would’ve knelt on a Maya-Angelou-facing prayer rug just to venerate it.
Despite also his wiping sweat from his brow with a scarf and tossing it into his Vegas crowd, Elvis nonetheless sang the Battle Hymn with a reverence that’s righteous in reverberation. A musical phrasing of “Dixie” appears at the song’s bridge, presumably to both echo Elvis’ Mississippi origins and as the Civil War Centennial’s own nod to national unity (Dixie’s diasporic lyrics hadn’t yet begun to set Leftist hair afire). Also, while giving the Battle Hymn the honor it deserves in varying degrees, other artists covering it range from Mark Twain (whose re-worded version wasn’t published until 1958 — the same year that Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser” hit number 46 on the dance charts) to the Chad Mitchell Trio and Leonard Cohen. Winston Churchill was a great admirer who directed that it be played at his funeral, and Ronald Reagan was reduced to tears as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sung it during his inauguration. Sung by the U.S. Army Band, it also marked the emotional high point of President Trump’s second inaugural.
The Battle Hymn sounded again during one of the Trump inaugural balls as the new chief, his wife Melania, and their entire family seemed made to dance to it as if it were “Begin the Beguine.” While some might rightly view its use in that context a mishandling of its solemnity, this was a joyous occasion for the president, who could be forgiven for leaning out from his wife’s embrace to exaggeratingly mouth the “Glory, Glory” lyrics on their second go-round. That’s a far cry from Reagan’s reaction, but it seemed less intended to ridicule the song than exult in The Raised Collar One’s’ funereal version of it.
Besides, that’s Trump. Jacksonian from the jump.
Now the Battle Hymn stands second only to the National Anthem in the reverence it commands. It’s not perfect, and whether or not Christ was born with any lilies nearby, it continues to stir the hearts of Americans (including this one) while reminding them of their nation’s — and particularly their warfighters’ — spirit, faith, sacrifice and strength.
Besides, it’s what you carry into battle.
It says so right in the name.
*As one who can remember buying beer for 15 cents a pour at Bassin’s GW Inn just over a century later, I’m guessing that in 1861, dollar-per-shot bourbon was a mining-camp price.