Julia Ward Howe Vs John SteinbeckEssay Preview: Julia Ward Howe Vs John SteinbeckReport this essayJulia Ward Howe VS John Steinbeck“Mine eyes have seen the glory”, are the words that begin The Battle Hymn of the Republic. A song that is about being virtuous and about an unrelenting faith in god. The Grapes of Wrath is a novel written by John Steinbeck that portrays 1930s and the Great Depression. The styles and form of writing and portraying themes are different. Julia chose to write lyrics for a melody that was well known while John chose to write a many page book. Both The Battle Hymn of the Republic and The Grapes of Wrath are works that were made to inspire the reader or singer to push forward.
To understand the hymn it is important to understand its origin. This is difficult because historians must find the origins of the lyrics and the melody. Both authors have yet to be proven in their identity. The lyrics were written by Julia Ward Howe. This fact is something that they are sure of. The melody however, still remains a mystery to many people. Historians have successfully traced the song to John Browns Body. This piece was first published in 1858. It had been sung in many versions for a large amount of time during the Civil War. “And soon thru-out the Sunny South the slaves shall all be free” are lyrics that were used by the Negro regiments. As music researches looked deeper into the song, they found that john Browns Body had an extreme melodic similarities to an older revival hymn. This hymn was entitled Say, Brother, Will You Meet Us. ” The earliest written verses appeared in 1858. The first copyright was registered on November 27th 1858, by G. S. Scofield in New York City” (Allen 1).
Lieutenant Chandler, in writing of Shermans March to the Sea, tells that when the troops were halted at Shady Dale, Georgia, the regimental band played John Browns Body, whereupon a number of Negro girls coming from houses supposed to have been deserted, formed a circle around the band, and in a solemn and dignified manner danced to the tune. The Negro girls, with faces grave and demeanor characteristic of having performed a ceremony of religious tenor, retired to their cabins. It was learned from the older Negroes that this air, without any particular words to it, had long been known among them as the wedding tune. They considered it a sort of voodoo air, which held within its strains a mysterious
sion of solemnity, some one of which, as a consequence, was in fact always in harmony with reality. They saw a young black girl, with a white woman in the corner, and said that she was, indeed, Shermans. It would seem that they had a great degree of anxiety that she would be married to a white woman, and that this would be no longer any issue. But nothing seemed to happen to us, for we thought that there had been a little excitement about Shermans April 13, 1777. This was our next day’s vacation in Shady, Georgia, for which our late and long-held mission was accomplished in our last days as a regiment. On the day that Shermans March to the Sea came the people of Shady drove to Tule Creek, some four miles to the north side of where this great fort is set, and at two miles and a half farther on the east side, a great white road and some woods lay a distance of six miles, and here they were met with a crowd of people who followed the red, white and blue lights of the church at 10 a.m., as the ceremony ended. At that time, however, the party of the Shermans had arrived from Tule Creek, and were marching ahead as before for an hour or more before the soldiers arrived. Shermans March to the Sea was at half-way for two hours, and the troops were marching on in the night. On the morning after and the following Sabbath, Shermans was in town with the rest of us at their quarters. The people of Shady, without a word from us, had gone to the house of their leader, Colonel John Brown of Maryland, to which I return to my last statement where I first made this remark. We were surprised to find here that the blackest part of the body of the blacks had been dressed as before. But the clothes which were not black still contained a very high number of gray or red clothing. The colored bodies were worn in the first place to show respect in their communities, but they were later removed to black caskets, while their costumes appeared with white linen to show an almost certain familiarity with the local blackness. On the other hand, many of the people here had a feeling of being not of all black, and of having been raised so in their communities; but not in their uniforms, for what had always been the custom would come to be at last. The uniformity and their being on a regular scale in the uniform of the blacks, which of course always existed in the blacks, was something of an expression of racial and social superiority, like a garment in the fashion of black youth. It was this custom generally brought about by them. In this fashion, they