I always thought that the Battle Hymn of the Republic was a Negro spiritual, originally composed and sung by slaves in the run-up to the Civil War of the 1860s that sought an end to slavery. So I was sort of surprised when it was sung at President Donald Trump’s inaugural. Was it originally, or also, a white song? After some browsing, I find that the answer is yes, both sides have a claim to it pala.

The original tune is that of Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us, a religious hymn borne of slave culture that was being sung in “camp meetings” in the southern states by both blacks and whites, of meeting up on “Canaan’s happy shores” and giving glory to Jesus “for glory is His own” — one of 150 hymns first collected and published in the early 1800s whose tune and variants spread across to northern states.

Fast forward to the 1860s. Around campfires, Union soldiers played around with the lyrics of Say, Brothers and came up with John Brown’s Body and the “Glory Glory Hallelujah” refrain, in tribute, lament, memory of the  anti-slavery radical John Brown whose trial and hanging for treason in 1859 heightened tensions that led to the Civil War.

Soon enough, white poet Julia Ward Howe rewrote, elevated, the lyrics, made the song “richer for a kind of educated audience” and re-named it Battle Hymn of the Republic, which quickly became a powerful anthem not just for the victorious Union forces, but also for the other side of the racial divide that persists to the present.

What we heard at the Trump inaugural is the latest white version, rendered by the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club, with “very clever changes in key and tempo.”

As the voices of the midshipmen and women echoed from the neoclassical style walls of the Capitol rotunda, the dignitaries – including former presidents, Supreme Court justices, and world leaders – were transported out of space and time into a mythological and patriotic dimension in which the majestic room beneath the Capitol dome really became the ‘symbolic and physical heart’ of the Capitol, and of America as a whole.

Before this, the Battle Hymn was mostly sang at state funerals — Robert F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter. That Trump deemed it the appropriate first musical number at his second coming had me wondering exactly what message he was sending not just to African Americans but to the world in general — this song of wrath and lightning, swords and serpents, triumphalism and vengeance, all in the name of God whose truth is marching on. So help us God.

Birgitta Johnson is quick to point out that the “Battle Hymn” is, at the end of the day, a war song.

“The kumbaya moment will not be happening across the aisles because of this song,” she says, “because it’s really about supporting whatever your perspective is — about freedom or liberation, and having God as the person who’s ordaining what we’re doing. And ‘glory, hallelujah’ about that.” https://www.npr.org/

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That Patriotic and Awful Song: ”Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Robert Bray
https://www.hnn.us/article/that-patriotic-and-awful-song-battle-hymn-of-the-r

One Song Glory by Andrew Limbong
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/04/625351953/one-song-glory

Battle Hymn of the Republic: a musical chameleon? by David Guion
https://music.allpurposeguru.com/2019/04/battle-hymn-of-the-republic-a-musical-chameleon/

So help me God! by Amelia H. C. Ylagan
https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2025/01/27/648955/so-help-me-god/