But the song became the unofficial anthem of the South during the war, and its lyrics were changed to make it a battle song. Even stranger, “Dixie” was often featured in minstrel shows-white performers who painted their hands and faces black and acted out shameful stereotypes of former slaves. This lively song of the South was actually written in New York City by a northern composer named Dan Emmett. “Dixie” - The Unofficial Anthem of the South Not only did the song sing for an end to slavery, this “hymn”-a holy, church song-claimed that God was on the North’s side. Howe’s new words also angered southerners. Included in one verse of the hymn were the words “let us die to make men free”-to fight to end slavery, in other words. She and her husband were strong anti-slavery activists, called abolitionists. Howe took dead aim at slavery in her lyrics. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: (Oddly, it had been a southerner named William Steffe who had written the original music.) Howe’s version was packed with Biblical imagery and phrasing. The new song spread quickly through the Union armies and was adopted by Union supporters who wanted to teach the southern rebels a lesson. That “something of importance” proved to be the words to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In February 1862, she sold her poem to the Atlantic Monthly, a well-known magazine, for five dollars. Having completed this, I lay down again and fell asleep, but not before feeling that something of importance had happened to me.” I… began to scrawl the lines almost without looking…. I lay quite still until the last verse had completed itself in my thoughts, then hastily arose, saying to myself, I shall lose this if I don’t write it down immediately. I… awoke the next morning in the gray of the early dawn, and to my astonishment found that the wished-for lines were arranging themselves in my brain. “I replied that I had often wished to do so,” Howe later wrote. A preacher standing with Howe encouraged her to write new lyrics to the tune.
While there, Howe, a published poet, heard Union troops belting out a well-known marching song called “John Brown’s Body,” after the famous abolitionist, John Brown. In November 1861, a woman named Julia Ward Howe and her husband visited Washington, D.C.