Le radical John Brown fut considéré comme le premier martyr de la cause abolitionniste après sa pendaison en 1859. L'hymne composé pour souligner sa mort va connaître un sort particulier et "inspirer" un autre air célèbre. Retour sur l'origine de Battle hymn of the republic. À lire au complet pour les passionnés d'histoire.
"On Nov. 17, 1861, Julia Ward Howe traveled with her husband Samuel, then director of the Army’s Sanitary Commission, to review a Union camp outside of Washington. Howe recalled the troops singing “the army songs so popular at the time,” noting especially their enthusiasm for the lyrics, “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground; His soul is marching on.” One of Howe’s companions, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, made a suggestion: “Mrs. Howe, why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?”
Howe never explained the reasons why Brown, the radical abolitionist, was deemed an unsatisfactory subject, but she woke up “in the gray of the [following] morning” with new lyrics in her head. “I sprang out of bed,” she recalled, “and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen [and] I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”
Howe’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” written in the early morning of Nov. 18, 1861, and eventually published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862, became one of the most memorable patriotic songs in American history. When Abraham Lincoln first heard it, he reportedly cried, then requested an encore."
Voici une interprétation de John Brown's body:
Interprétation de Battle Hymn of the republic:
Pour l'article au complet:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/the-battle-hymn-of-john-brown/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1
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