| Created By: |
uncle mikey Jan 02, 2009
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| Artist: |
Julia Ward Howe |
| Categories: |
Music |
| Description: |
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is an American abolitionist song, written by Julia Ward Howe in November 1861, first published in The Atlantic Monthly on February 1, 1862, which became popular during the American Civil War. Although the composition of the melody was attributed to William Steffe in 1855, his role was most probably that of a transcriber of a commonly sung tune and text that had arisen through a folk tradition, rather than as it's original composer. Some researchers have claimed the tune's roots go back to a "Negro folk song", an African-American wedding song from Georgia, or to a British sea chantey that originated as a Swedish drinking song. The lyrics of the Battle Hymn appear in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermons and speeches, most notably in his speech "How Long, Not Long" delivered in Montgomery, Alabama on March 25th, 1965 after the third Selma March, and in his final sermon "I've Been to the Mountaintop" delivered in Memphis, Tennessee on the evening of April 3rd, 1968. |
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