[5] At a flag-raising ceremony at Fort Warren, near Boston, Massachusetts, on Sunday, May 12, 1861, the song "John Brown's Body", using the "Oh!

"[6]According to Kimball, these sayings became by-words among the soldiers and, in a communal effort—similar in many ways to the spontaneous composition of camp meeting songs described above—were gradually put to the tune of "Say, Brothers": Finally ditties composed of the most nonsensical, doggerel rhymes, setting for the fact that John Brown was dead and that his body was undergoing the process of decomposition, began to be sung to the music of the hymn above given.

These ditties underwent various ramifications, until eventually the lines were reached,— "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His soul's marching on."

These lines seemed to give general satisfaction, the idea that Brown's soul was "marching on" receiving recognition at once as having a germ of inspiration in it.

[6]Some leaders of the battalion, feeling the words were coarse and irreverent, tried to urge the adoption of more fitting lyrics, but to no avail.

[8][9] Kimball's battalion was dispatched to Murray, Kentucky, early in the Civil War, and Julia Ward Howe heard this song during a public review of the troops outside Washington, D.C., on Upton Hill, Virginia.

Staying at the Willard Hotel in Washington on the night of November 18, 1861, Howe wrote the verses to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic".

[11] Of the writing of the lyrics, Howe remembered: I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly.

I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.

So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pencil which I remembered to have used the day before.

[12]Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was first published on the front page of The Atlantic Monthly of February 1862.

Both "John Brown" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" were published in Father Kemp's Old Folks Concert Tunes in 1874 and reprinted in 1889.

In Howe's lyrics, the words of the verse are packed into a yet longer line, with even more syllables than "John Brown's Body."

Howe submitted the lyrics she wrote to The Atlantic Monthly, and it was first published in the February 1862 issue of the magazine.

[14][15] 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.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on.

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!

Most significantly, it included a final verse: He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave, He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave, So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave, Our God is marching on.

[19] In the years since the Civil War, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" has been used frequently as an American patriotic song.

[27] The lyrics of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" appear in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermons and speeches, most notably in his speech "How Long, Not Long" from the steps of the Alabama State Capitol building on March 25, 1965, after the successful Selma to Montgomery march, and in his final sermon "I've Been to the Mountaintop", delivered in Memphis, Tennessee, on the evening of April 3, 1968, the night before his assassination.

Bishop Michael B. Curry of North Carolina, after his election as the first African American Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, delivered a sermon to the Church's General Convention on July 3, 2015, in which the lyrics of the "Battle Hymn" framed the message of God's love.

[29] The title of John Updike's In the Beauty of the Lilies also came from this song, as did Terrible Swift Sword and Never Call Retreat, two volumes in Bruce Catton's Centennial History of the Civil War.

has been adopted by fans of a number of sporting teams, most notably in the English and Scottish Premier Leagues.

The words by Stewart McAfee[37] celebrate the team's historic successes ("Mine eyes have seen the glory of Espana '82"), whilst acknowledging in a witty way that it is not among the giants of world football.

A studio recording sung by the team and featuring local broadcasters George Jones and Jackie Fullerton was released in 2006.