Though the Battle Hymn of the Republic is more than 150 years old, it is still embraced by Americans of all political persuasions.According to Ben Soskis, co-author of a new book about the song, that’s because it speaks to a particularly American sensibility.“The idea that America has the providential responsibility to help bring the world into a realm of perfect peace and to bring freedom to the world,” he said.That’s not how the song started out.It had a meandering path to become the iconic anthem it is today.“As far as we know, it can be traced back to an early Camp Meeting Revival hymnal in 1806,” Soskis said of the song “On Canaan’s Happy Shore.”“It had the 'Glory, glory, Hallelujah’chorus,” he said.Fifty years later, during the Civil War, the Canaan song was popular with a group of Northern solders in Boston who had a man in their unit named John Brown -the same name as the famous abolitionist who had been hanged after trying to start a slave uprising in 1859.The men in the unit liked to tease Brown about having such a famous name.“They would say 'Oh, there goes John Brown.'And somebody else would say, 'I thought John Brown was dead.'And another would say, ‘Oh, but he's still marching on,’” Soskis said.
