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Before it was a hymn, the tune was a soldiers’ song about a dead man: John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. This page has the lyrics Julia Ward Howe wrote to replace those words, a plain explanation of the Bible images packed into the first verse, and her own account of writing it in the grey light of a November morning in 1861.
Listen: Battle Hymn of the Republic
Battle Hymn of the Republic — Full Lyrics
Verse 1
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
Chorus
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
Verse 2
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Chorus
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
Verse 3
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Chorus
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
The song it was written to replace
The melody started life in the 1850s as a camp-meeting chorus, Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us, usually credited to William Steffe. By 1861 Union soldiers had put new words to it about John Brown, the abolitionist hanged in 1859 after his raid on Harpers Ferry. The soldiers’ version was catchy and rough, and it was everywhere.
In November 1861 Howe was in Washington and rode out to watch a review of troops. The review was broken off by a skirmish, and on the slow drive back through columns of marching men her party sang army songs to pass the time, ending with John Brown’s Body. The soldiers on the road called back, “Good for you!”
Her minister, James Freeman Clarke, was in the carriage. He asked her why she did not write some good words for that stirring tune. She told him she had often wished to, and had not found a way in.
Written in the dark, before dawn
She found it that night. In her Reminiscences, published in 1899, Howe says she woke “in the gray of the morning twilight” with the lines already forming, and got up so she would not fall asleep and lose them.
She wrote with “an old stump of a pen” and barely looked at the paper. It was a habit, she explains, from earlier nights when verses came to her and she did not dare light a lamp for fear of waking the baby sleeping near her. The scrawl was only readable while she still remembered what it said.
Then she went back to bed. Her verdict on the most famous thing she ever wrote was modest: “I like this better than most things that I have written.” The Atlantic Monthly printed it in February 1862.
What “the grapes of wrath” means
The first verse is almost entirely scripture. “Trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored” comes from the winepress of judgment in Isaiah 63:3 — I have trodden the winepress alone — and from Revelation 14:19–20, where the harvest of the earth is thrown into “the great winepress of the wrath of God.”
The picture is of grapes being crushed underfoot: justice that has been stored up for a long time finally being carried out. For Howe, writing in the first year of a war over slavery, it was not abstract.
The phrase outlived the war. John Steinbeck took it for the title of his 1939 novel about Dust Bowl migrants, and many people now know the words from the book before they know them from the hymn.
“Let us die to make men free” — or live?
Howe wrote: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. The line sets the cross beside the battlefield. Christ died for holiness, and she was asking her readers, in 1861, to be willing to die for freedom.
Many modern hymnals and performances change it to “let us live to make men free.” That change is a later edit, not Howe’s wording. The original is harder to sing and says something more costly, and it is the version on this page.
The hymn did go where she hoped. In her memoir she tells how Chaplain Charles McCabe, a prisoner in Richmond’s Libby Prison, heard that the Union had won a victory and led the men in the room in singing the Battle Hymn together. When he told the story in a lecture in Washington, people began to ask who had written it.
About this recording
Words by Julia Ward Howe (written Nov 1861; published Atlantic Monthly, Feb 1862), 1862. Tune JOHN BROWN'S BODY / 'Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us', camp-meeting tune c.1856, attr. William Steffe, 1862. Both the text and the tune are in the public domain, so this hymn is free to print, project, sing and record.
This is a new traditional gospel arrangement of the original public-domain words, produced with AI-assisted music generation. The text is unchanged; the setting is new, so a hymn you know well will be familiar in its words and different in its music.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic?
Julia Ward Howe wrote the words in Washington, D.C., in November 1861, and the Atlantic Monthly published them in February 1862. The tune is older: a 1850s camp-meeting melody, Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us, usually attributed to William Steffe, which soldiers had already used for John Brown’s Body.
Is the Battle Hymn of the Republic in the public domain?
Yes. Howe’s text was published in 1862 and the tune dates from the 1850s, both well before the 1930 line that governs public domain status in the United States. You may print, project, sing and record it freely. A specific modern arrangement can still carry its own copyright, so license the arrangement you are using rather than assuming the hymn covers it.
What does “the grapes of wrath” mean in the Battle Hymn?
It is an image of God’s judgment taken from the Bible. Isaiah 63:3 and Revelation 14:19–20 both describe a winepress in which grapes are trampled, and Revelation calls it “the great winepress of the wrath of God.” “Trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored” means long-stored justice finally being carried out.
Is the Battle Hymn of the Republic the same tune as John Brown’s Body?
Yes. Howe wrote her words for the tune Union soldiers were already singing as John Brown’s Body, after her minister James Freeman Clarke suggested she give it better lyrics. Both songs use the same melody and the same “Glory, glory, hallelujah” chorus, which came from the earlier camp-meeting song Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us.
Is it “let us die to make men free” or “let us live to make men free”?
Howe wrote “let us die to make men free.” The Atlantic Monthly printed it that way in 1862. “Live” is a later change made by some hymnals and performers; it is not the original wording.
How many verses does the Battle Hymn of the Republic have?
The Atlantic Monthly printed five verses in 1862. Most hymnals and performances use three or four, usually keeping the first (“Mine eyes have seen the glory”), the trumpet verse, and the last (“In the beauty of the lilies”). The two about the army camps and the “fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel” are the ones most often left out.
Why did Martin Luther King Jr. quote the Battle Hymn?
King closed two of his best-known speeches with it. He ended his address at the end of the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965 by reciting lines from the hymn, and he ended his final speech, in Memphis on April 3, 1968, with its first line: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” A hymn written for a war against slavery became a hymn of the civil rights movement.
