The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
58–61).
Arguing that it has become a kind of “unofficial anthem” for America, historian John Stauffer offers several reasons for its popularity. He believes that by distinguishing “us” and “them,” it makes a good song for war. He further argues that it exemplifies American civil religion, that it has been “immensely adaptable,” that it “exploits the millennialist strain in American culture,” that it is “aspirational,” and that it “is a musical masterpiece” (2015, 144–45).
Grant Shreve notes that the opening line of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is engraved on the base of a statue by Donald Harcourt De Lue at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Coleville-sur-Mer entitled “The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves.” Shreve observes that “De Lue’s use of the poem’s line transforms into a testament to the promises of internationalism after World War II” (2017).
See also Brown, John; Civil War; King, Martin Luther, Jr.
For Reference and Further Reading
Collins, Ace. 2003. Songs Sung Red, White, and Blue: The Stories behind America’s Best-Loved Patriotic Songs. New York: HarperCollins.
Fahs, Alice. 2001. The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Gamble, Richard M. 2019. A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
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Lyons, John Henry. 1942. Stories of Our American Patriotic Songs. New York: Vanguard Press.
McConathy, Osbourne, Russell V. Morgan, James L. Mursell, Marshall Bartholomew, Mabel E. Bray, W. Otto Miessner, and Edward Bailey Birge. 1946. New Music Horizons. Fifth Book. New York: Silver Burdett.
Sanders, Mary. 2016. “A Mighty Fortress Is Our Battle Hymn of the Republic: Episcopal Liturgy and American Civil Religion in the National Prayer Service on 14 September 2001.” Anglican and Episcopal History 85 (March): 63–86.
Shreve, Grant. October 20, 2017. “The Long, Winding History of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic.’” JSTOR Daily Newsletter. https://daily.jstor.org/the-long-winding-history-of-the-battle-hymn-of-the-republic/.
Snyder, Edward D. 1951. “The Biblical Background of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic.’” New England Quarterly 24 (June): 231–38.
Spofford, Ainsworth R. 1904. “The Lyric Element in American History.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, DC 7: 211–36.
Stauffer, John. 2015. “’The Battle Hymn of the Republic’: Origins, Influence, Legacies.” Exploring Lincoln: Great Historians Reappraise Our Greatest President, ed. Harold Holzer, Craig L. Symonds, and Frank J. Williams. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 123–45.
Stauffer, John, and Benjamin Soskis. 2013. The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On. New York: Oxford University Press.
Vile, John R. 2020. America’s National Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner in U.S. History, Culture, and Law. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. [Note: This essay closely follows the one in this book.]
Beecher, Catharine E.
Catharine E. Beecher (1800–1878) was a noted nineteenth-century educator who was the daughter of Pastor Lyman Beecher and the sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Beecher became disturbed by William Lloyd Garrison’s call for immediate abolitionism, and by the lectures that Sarah and Angelina Grimke were giving on the subject to popular audiences. She wrote an essay specifically addressed to Angelina as to why she thought it was inappropriate either to join such an anti-slavery society or to advocate on its behalf. In so doing, she differed with the Grimke sisters not only on abolitionism but also on appropriate female roles. Although Beecher did not cite nearly as many Scriptures as Angelina had done in her Appeal to Christian Women of the South, she certainly relied heavily on what she believed was the general view of the Bible with respect to such roles.
Much of Beecher’s arguments centered on methods. She simply did not think that organizing in one part of the country against perceived sins in another was likely to accomplish much, nor did she think that calls for immediate abolitionism were either practical in and of themselves or likely to engender goodwill among slave slates. She contrasted the tendency of such rhetoric to result in partisan disputes with the way that William Wilberforce (1759–1833) and others had eliminated slavery within the English colonies. Pointing to the “party spirit” that abolitionists fostered, Beecher observed that “such objects as the circulation of the bible, the extension of the Gospel, the promotion of Temperance and other benevolent associations, good men can unite in, without throwing themselves into the heart of party conflict” (1837, 93).
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Beecher had serious reservations about women entering such a world. Her arguments are indeed quite close to those that John Winthrop made in his “‘Little Speech’ on Liberty” in 1645 and consistent with the observations of Catherine Gardner that “Beecher’s moral world is a strictly hierarchical world” (2004, 4). Without making specific reference to Scripture, Beecher thus observed that “it is the grand feature of the Divine economy, that there should be different stations of superiority and subordination, and it is impossible to annihilate this beneficent and immutable law” (1837, 97). Just as children are subject to their parents, students to their teachers, and servants to their masters, so too wives should be subordinate to their husbands:
In this arrangement of the duties of life, Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior, and to the other the subordinate station, and this without any reference to the character or conduct of either. It is therefore as much for the dignity as it is for the interest of females, in all respects to conform to the duties of this relation. And it is as much a duty as it is for the child to fulfil similar relations to parents, or subjects to rulers. (Beecher 1837, 99)
Noting that “it is Christianity that has given to woman her true place in society,” Beecher observed that “it is the peculiar trait of Christianity alone that can sustain her therein. ‘Peace on earth and good will to men’ [Luke 2:14] is the character of all the rights and privileges, the influence, and the power of woman” (99). Whereas men might participate in the hurly-burly of politics, “woman is to win every thing by peace and love; by making herself so much respected, esteemed and loved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify her wishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart” (100). By contrast, “if petitions from females will operate to exasperate; if they will be deemed obtrusive, indecorous, and unwise, by those to whom they are addressed . . . then it is neither appropriate nor wise, nor right, for a woman to petition for the relief of oppressed females” (102–3). Recognizing that some might cite the biblical Queen Esther as a call to female political participation, Beecher responded, “When a woman is placed in similar circumstances, where death to herself and all her nation is one alternative, and there is nothing worse to fear, but something to hope as the other alternative, then she may safely follow such an example” (103). However, “in this country, petitions to congress, in reference to the official duties of legislators, seem, IN ALL CASES, to fall entirely without the sphere of female duty. Men are the proper persons to make appeals to the rulers whom they appoint” (104).
Beecher believed that women could take on the noble role of educating children while men educate older children and other men and participate in public affairs: “If the female advocate chooses