ABSTRACT
The irony seemed overwhelming: the 1862 song that we were singing in response to a terrorist attack was itself, in an earlier version, a celebration of a terrorist (see figs 1.1 and 1.2). The “John Brown Song” commemorated the radical abolitionist Brown’s bloodiest act-the 1859 armed takeover of a military installation at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia-by which Brown intended to spark a massive revolt among millions of slaves throughout the South (see fig. 1.3).3 Hoping to extract more than irony from this unusual moment, I began to think about “Battle Hymn’s” well-known origin myth: a narrative that frames author Julia Ward Howe’s moment of poetic inspiration as an expression of Northern resolve to wage civil war to preserve the union. I thought also about the “John Brown Song” (hereafter called “John Brown’s Body”) and its less well known origins as a fundamentalist camp meeting
Figure 1.1. Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as it appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862.
