How the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" became America's hymn

Here’s one thing Presidents Bush and Obama have in common: both had the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” featured at key points in their presidencies. But how did a song with such clear sectional roots become an “American hymn”? As we commemorate the Civil War, the song’s history sheds light on key aspects of who we are as Americans. 

The song’s origins are as much African as American. It probably began as a slave spiritual: “Say, brothers, will you meet us, / On Canaan’s happy shore.” “Say Brothers” was first published in an 1807 hymnbook, with call-and-response directions reflecting the form of spirituals. Numerous eyewitnesses describe slaves singing it in a ring shout, an African religious ritual in which people gathered in a circle to sing and dance.

In the 1850s, the song migrated north through hymnbooks. It became especially popular among soldiers of the Massachusetts Second Battalion—the “Tigers”—who garrisoned Fort Warren in Boston Harbor after the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861.