Welcome to the American Story. Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful.

Heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one, Battle Him of the Republic.

It is not every day that a poet sits down and writes a poem that becomes a national hymn.

But that's what happened to Julia Ward Howe on November 18, 1861. The country had been in a state of civil

war for a little over half a year, and she and her husband, both prominent

abolitionists, revis visiting Washington DC at the invitation

of Abraham Lincoln.

With a friend, the Reverend James Freeman Clark, They visited Union Army camps,

and passed some time in the carriage

singing Army marching songs.

Among them was the popular and sometimes earthy John Brown's body, set to the melody of a Methodist

campfire hymn.

The Reverend Mr Clark suggested that his poet friend consider writing her own more elevated lyrics

to the song.

How it had the same thought.

Later that evening she returned to the Willard Hotel.

In her words, I went to bed and slept as usual,

but awoke the next morning in the gray of the early dawn, and to my astonishment found that

the wished four lines were arranging themselves in my brain.

I lay quite still until the last verse had completed itself in my thoughts, then hastily

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