"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was written in 1861 by Julia Ward Howe, an abolitionist, poet, and activist. During a visit to a Union Army camp near Washington, D.C., Howe heard soldiers singing “John Brown’s Body,” a marching song about the martyred abolitionist. Inspired by the tune but seeking more uplifting and enduring lyrics, she penned new words the following morning.
Her poem was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862 and quickly became a powerful anthem for the Union cause during the Civil War. Blending religious imagery with patriotic fervor, the hymn declared the fight against slavery as a divine mission, famously opening with the line: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Since then, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" has remained a staple of American patriotic and religious music, resonating across generations in times of conflict, protest, and remembrance.
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.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.