A Fiery Gospel: The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Road to Righteous War

by Richard M. Gamble

Overview

Since its composition in Washington's Willard Hotel in 1861, Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" has been used to make America and its wars sacred. Few Americans reflect on its violent and redemptive imagery, drawn freely from prophetic passages of the Old and New Testaments, and fewer still think about the implications of that apocalyptic language for how Americans interpret who they are and what they owe the world.

In A Fiery Gospel, Richard M. Gamble describes how this camp-meeting tune, paired with Howe's evocative lyrics, became one of the most effective instruments of religious nationalism. He takes the reader back to the song's origins during the Civil War, and reveals how those political and military circumstances launched the song's incredible career in American public life. Gamble deftly considers the idea behind the song—humming the tune, reading the music for us—all while reveling in the multiplicity of meanings of and uses to which Howe's lyrics have been put. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" has been versatile enough to match the needs of Civil Rights activists and conservative nationalists, war hawks and peaceniks, as well as Europeans and Americans. This varied career shows readers much about the shifting shape of American righteousness. Yet it is, argues Gamble, the creator of the song herself—her Abolitionist household, Unitarian theology, and Romantic and nationalist sensibilities—that is the true conductor of this most American of war songs.

A Fiery Gospel depicts most vividly the surprising genealogy of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and its sure and certain position as a cultural piece in the uncertain amalgam that was and is American civil religion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501736414
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2019
Series:	Religion and American Public Life
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard M. Gamble is the Anna Margaret Ross Alexander Chair of History and Politics at Hillsdale College. He is author of In Search of the City on a Hill and The War for Righteousness.

Table of Contents

The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Prologue
1. The Besieged City
2. A Rich Crimson
3. "The Glorious Freedom of His Gospel"
4. Righteous War and Holy Peace
5. The Anglo-American "Battle Hymn"
6. The Valor of Righteousness
7. The Sacred Inheritance of Mankind
8. Exotic Medley
9. A Severed Nation
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

John Fea

A Fiery Gospel tells the complex and fascinating story of Julia Ward Howe's great national hymn, but this book is so much more. Like his earlier work on the idea of the United States as a city on a hill, Richard M. Gamble uses the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' to challenge us to think deeply and historically about the construction of American identity.

Daniel Walker Howe

Richard Gamble's amazing story of a heroic song, beautifully told and thoroughly researched, will appeal to readers with a wide range of interests, including American history and literature, patriotism, women's achievements, popular culture, and Biblical religion.

Mark Noll

We think we know 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic', but Richard Gamble better acquaints us with the mostly unknown author, Julia Ward Howe, and the almost entirely unknown history of her iconic poem. The result is a treasure trove of insight on Howe and her anthem, and the dubious career of American religious nationalism.

Editorial Reviews

03/04/2019

In this lively volume, Gamble (The War of Righteousness), chair of history and politics at Hillsdale College, offers a cultural and intellectual history of Julia Ward Howe’s poem “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” First published in the New-York Tribune in January 1862, Howe’s alternative lyric for the Union song “John Brown’s Body” has long had an enduring place in U.S. political and popular culture, Gamble writes. After the song reached a wider audience upon its publication in the Atlantic in 1862, it made its way into hymnals, school pageants, patriotic songbooks, and revival meetings. Written in support of the Union cause, the song was repurposed after the Civil War for a wide variety of national and international Christian, military, and political ventures, and, in the early 20th century, it was even under consideration for the U.S. national anthem. Howe (and then her daughters) also actively sought to manage the hymn’s legacy and protested instances of what they saw as misuse, including a public battle with Princeton professor Henry van Dyke in 1918 about his updated version. After his historical account, Gamble somewhat diffusely argues that Howe’s hymn moved from its Christian evangelical roots toward a less sectarian role in creating and affirming America’s nationalism. Readers with an interest in 19th-century American religious and political popular culture will enjoy this biography of a hymn. (May)

Publishers Weekly

An accessible, engaging, and above all informative volume.

The Collegian

Gamble sets out an animated and detailed history of the writing of the hymn in 1861, its appropriation in 1898 as an anthem for imperialism, and its bizarre array of applications during the twentieth century.

The Journal of American History

"This book is extremely detailed and very well-written, and the material is interesting on many levels. It will be a valuable resource to historians, church scholars, musicians, and anyone who has ever sung 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic'.

Anglican & Episcopal History

In this engagingly written and thoroughly researched book, Richard M. Gamble traces the history of Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" from its conception at the outset of the Civil War though the beginning of the 21st century.

Civil War Book Review

"A Fiery Gospel tells the complex and fascinating story of Julia Ward Howe's great national hymn, but this book is so much more.Like his earlier work on the idea of the United States as a city on a hill, Richard M. Gamble uses the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' to challenge us to think deeply and historically about the construction of American identity."

John Fea

"Richard Gamble's amazing story of a heroic song, beautifully told and thoroughly researched, will appeal to readers with a wide range of interests, including American history and literature, patriotism, women's achievements, popular culture, and Biblical religion."

Daniel Walker Howe

"We think we know 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic', but Richard Gamble better acquaints us with the mostly unknown author, Julia Ward Howe, and the almost entirely unknown history of her iconic poem. The result is a treasure trove of insight on Howe and her anthem, and the dubious career of American religious nationalism."

Mark Noll

"Richard M. Gamble has written a complicated and fascinating book. His impressive interpretive skill makes Making America Sacred an excellent read."

R. Laurence Moore

"Making America Sacred is a lively book that provides a convenient and poignant vehicle for exploring the subjects of American wars and the rationale for fighting them through the analysis of what was at first an insignificant poem."

Darryl G. Hart