"I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, Since God is marching on."
Replies
Wasteland 2 and 3 are worth a playthrough if you liked turn-based RPGs like XCOM, etc. Helluva soundtrack, though.
jul 13, 2025, 2:15 am • 4 0 • view
I was never much for video games but as a preteen the original Wasteland was the most important thing for a year and I’m just now learning about the sequels. My reality is shifting somewhat.
jul 13, 2025, 6:18 am • 2 0 • view
Hymn goes unbelievably hard.
jul 13, 2025, 12:41 pm • 3 0 • view
"As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free" is the hardest and best lyric of literally every hymn, and while this country is not a christian nation, it is the only christian hymn I would gladly accept in substitute for the national anthem because of it
jul 13, 2025, 3:37 am • 583 79 • view
100% and pair that with the Second Inaugural which goes as hard as any political speech of progress and unity that there is.
jul 13, 2025, 3:39 am • 113 1 • view
"Yet, if God wills that [the war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword..."
jul 13, 2025, 3:52 am • 81 7 • view
"... as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said -- 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" [chills]
jul 13, 2025, 3:52 am • 57 4 • view
I look back at the time I was taught in school that the “Civil War wasn’t about slavery it was about economics” and just marvel. To make that statement a teacher has to willfully ignore the greatest speech in American history.
jul 13, 2025, 4:03 am • 115 4 • view
Every time someone says that sort of crap my only reaction is “economics of WHAT?!” “States rights TO DO WHAT?!”
jul 14, 2025, 2:07 am • 6 0 • view
I wonder if slavery has anything to do with economics
jul 14, 2025, 1:49 am • 3 0 • view
I cannot fathom an adult trying to explain this to a child and not immediately realizing their oversight
jul 14, 2025, 1:50 am • 2 0 • view
i genuinely believe that lincoln was imbued with divine inspiration while writing the second inaugural
jul 14, 2025, 1:35 am • 145 6 • view
I just thought that although flawed, he was brilliant.
jul 14, 2025, 1:46 am • 0 0 • view
[] if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword [] 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'
jul 14, 2025, 1:42 am • 77 5 • view
It goes hard, and he was right
jul 14, 2025, 1:42 am • 39 0 • view
I'm always reminded of Tolstoy's anecdote about when he was asked to speak about Lincoln to some Circassians, who had heard of him and believed that he was close to the divine. That conversation led Tolstoy to conclude that Lincoln was closer to Christ than to any other statesman in the world.
jul 14, 2025, 2:05 am • 5 0 • view
In any case, I do not think there are very many orators in history who were as good or as skillful as Lincoln. Virtually every single one of his speeches is rightfully considered a masterpiece of oratory.
jul 14, 2025, 2:25 am • 3 0 • view
Any reading to recommend that shaped your views of Lincoln? Appreciate your presence here, J.
jul 14, 2025, 2:17 am • 1 0 • view
So good it doesn’t seem real. Fascinated with how internal theological struggles dyed both he and E. Dickinson’s written work.
jul 14, 2025, 1:58 am • 1 0 • view
Mississippi Declaration of Secession: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth."
jul 14, 2025, 2:18 am • 8 1 • view
Article I Section 9(4) of the Constitution of the Confederate States; No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed
jul 14, 2025, 2:24 am • 2 0 • view
And the "letters of secession" from the Confederate States which are awfully clear it's about slavery. Horrific things to read
jul 14, 2025, 1:45 am • 24 2 • view
Neo-confederates: it wasn't just about slavery Literally all of the confederate states, in their letters seceding: this is about slavery
jul 14, 2025, 1:50 am • 38 4 • view
Texas: also, the feds didn't help us kill Comanches enough
jul 14, 2025, 1:54 am • 7 0 • view
But very much mainly slavery. "They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy" right there in the TX secession
jul 14, 2025, 1:57 am • 16 0 • view
Like none of them were subtle about this. It was not hidden. [GA]: "we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery" [MS]: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery"
jul 14, 2025, 1:58 am • 17 1 • view
The infamous "Cornerstone Speech" by the VP of the Confederacy makes it plain that slavery is what they really cared about. www.battlefields.org/learn/primar...
jul 14, 2025, 2:26 am • 1 0 • view
Also some of them speaking as individuals -- like Jefferson Davis's farewell to the US Senate, expressing a view of "states' rights" which is... not easy to reconcile with postwar revisionism. (Per Jeff, the *northern* states had claimed an unfounded right to annul the Fugitive Slave Act.)
jul 14, 2025, 1:59 am • 0 0 • view
The whole thing is a spine freezer, no doubt.
jul 14, 2025, 2:00 am • 0 0 • view
The Second Inaugural goes so fucking hard.
jul 13, 2025, 3:53 am • 14 1 • view
I’m so mad that “with malice towards none, with charity towards all” circulates isolated from everything else. It’s so motivated and so messed up.
jul 13, 2025, 3:54 am • 16 1 • view
Yeah once you understand his fatalist theology (which is like, not SUBTLE in that very speech!), that line hits 100% different
jul 13, 2025, 3:55 am • 10 0 • view
“We do not hate you, but we will annihilate you and all your earthly belongings for as long as it takes for god to pick a winner, which should be us eventually because our cause is just but we’ll see.”
jul 13, 2025, 4:09 am • 16 3 • view
On some level it's not your fault you're the bad guys here, however,
jul 13, 2025, 4:10 am • 11 0 • view
Look, it may have been God's plan for you to be on the side of evil, but it's also part of that same plan for me to kick your ass so the world learns its lesson
jul 13, 2025, 4:12 am • 15 3 • view
For a century and a half at least 🫠
jul 13, 2025, 4:15 am • 4 0 • view
UNTIL EVERY DROP OF BLOOD DRAWN WITH THE LASH SHALL BE PAID BY ANOTHER DRAWN WITH THE SWORD
jul 13, 2025, 4:04 am • 15 0 • view
It might be the single most visceral clause in all of American political rhetorical history.
jul 13, 2025, 4:05 am • 8 0 • view
I read it every time I visit his memorial.
jul 13, 2025, 1:02 pm • 0 0 • view
This country has no higher honor than the United States Army Field Band playing it at your funeral. No medal, certificate, nor anything else comes close. Because that line alone *is* America. Or at least America, as it ought to be
jul 13, 2025, 3:51 am • 90 5 • view
Knowing that it (probably?) grew out of a song honoring John Brown makes it go hard on another level.
jul 13, 2025, 4:24 am • 6 0 • view
Indeed. I’ll take Morehouse College too.
jul 13, 2025, 3:55 am • 70 4 • view
jul 13, 2025, 4:16 am • 24 0 • view
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir IMO performs it better than anyone else, tho still, while they are incredible, the United States Field Army Band or the US Marine Corps Band still command the higher national honor to perform it www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAqN...
jul 13, 2025, 4:03 am • 32 1 • view
It’s a good rendition. And agree about the military bands. While they only do three verses, when the Morehouse choir sings “as he died to make men holy let us die to make men free” — at Jimmy Carter’s funeral, the Morehouse men, in remebrance of Carter’s life— that’s a moment.
jul 13, 2025, 4:13 am • 29 2 • view
Like seriously listen to this. May everyone live their lives worthy of these people being dispatched to honor what sacrifice those lyrics call on everyone to pay towards the generations that follow. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy6A...
jul 13, 2025, 4:12 am • 36 9 • view
The song is filled with images from the Book of Revelation. The North was in conflict with the forces of evil. The South did not deserves any mercy. But also important to note that the apocalyptic imagery was two-fold: the ultimate destruction but also the hope of redemption as well. A banger.
jul 14, 2025, 1:33 am • 0 0 • view
Thanks for this discussion tonight. After too much time wasted posting at doomers and futilists today, it’s good to be reminded of the values the current political fight is about.
jul 13, 2025, 4:18 am • 21 1 • view
However garbage its current administration, this country is, and was, and always will be worth fighting for.
jul 13, 2025, 4:19 am • 63 9 • view
Lean into foundational American values — the ideas the country is built on even if some only aspirational, then and now — and we will not go astray in this current fight.
jul 13, 2025, 4:21 am • 35 2 • view
The Constitution declares that the job of each generation of Americans is to continue the unending task of building a more perfect Union. Not a *perfect* Union - no human endeavor can ever be perfect. But each of us can do our part to perfect it.
jul 13, 2025, 4:45 am • 17 3 • view
Thank you for saying it, fellow patriots. We are here for the long fight.
jul 13, 2025, 6:02 am • 3 0 • view
📌
jul 13, 2025, 1:56 pm • 0 0 • view
Keep mythology out of public policy Fuck your gods I will march for no god
jul 14, 2025, 1:06 am • 0 0 • view
Just putting it out there that this is a weirdly aggressive response to the post you are replying to
jul 14, 2025, 1:30 am • 0 0 • view
Fuck Yeah! The gods have earned aggression Their fucked up minions have earned aggression No single greater source of human suffering than fucking gods
jul 14, 2025, 1:36 am • 0 0 • view
The Mormons bowdlerize the most important line.
jul 13, 2025, 4:45 am • 4 0 • view
Not quite my tempo (it’s a March!) but that is beautiful.
jul 13, 2025, 4:11 am • 2 0 • view
Wow. This is pretty incredible. You ain't kidding.
jul 13, 2025, 5:56 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jul 13, 2025, 10:22 am • 0 0 • view
📌
jul 13, 2025, 10:21 am • 0 0 • view
and a great thing is that timeless lyrics/texts can be reappropriated/reborn. It used to be a christian lyric, now its secular scripture of the american idea/nation
jul 13, 2025, 3:41 am • 16 0 • view
Yes. Can and should. FDR’s Four Freedoms and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural should both be extensively quoted on the floors of Congress this year.
jul 13, 2025, 3:44 am • 34 3 • view
someone on here a few days ago said a few days ago that they'd make memorizing/reciting both mandatory in public schools and god yes please
jul 13, 2025, 3:45 am • 13 0 • view
This is such a lovely conversation. Thanks. Years ago, when I taught intro to American Studies, I would assign memorization/recitation of a passage from notable American oratory. I wanted the students to hear and feel the exhortations, spoken aloud, for us to pursue our professed ideals.
jul 13, 2025, 4:07 am • 9 0 • view
I love this! I can still recite the King speeches we memorized/recited in middle school, which I'm so thankful for. There's something so transformative for the soul; of course learning the history and becoming part of the great chain of democratic thinkers and practitioners, but also just...
jul 13, 2025, 4:21 am • 3 0 • view
having those beautiful and horrifying words and ideas become a part of you and be an accessible part of your thought and consciousness as a person/citizen. As the kids would say, the good cringe haha
jul 13, 2025, 4:21 am • 4 0 • view
🙌🏼 Yes, my thinking too. I didn’t come up with that tradition but I see its value. In fact, in the past few years I’ve been fortunate to take part in a couple of read-aloud circles of both prose and poetry—a contemporary spin on communal reading. Good cringe is something I aspire to lately tbqh.
jul 13, 2025, 4:28 am • 3 0 • view
“Wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces”
jul 13, 2025, 3:53 am • 5 0 • view
"... but let us judge not that we be not judged." snarky Lincoln!
jul 13, 2025, 4:13 am • 5 0 • view
Odetta's version is a fave. And it has "died". youtu.be/4VsE9T4Sr30?...
jul 13, 2025, 5:07 am • 4 1 • view
The #America I miss. #NazisRaus youtu.be/KVd1AxViLY4?...
jul 14, 2025, 4:55 am • 2 0 • view
Amen. I think I did a pretty good version of it in 2023. Solo acoustic, single no dub take. pomegranatecountyirregulars.bandcamp.com/track/battle...
jul 13, 2025, 4:10 am • 0 0 • view
How they’re sung makes a difference too. Starting that verse slowly, peacefully, building up to the last is magical.
jul 13, 2025, 7:11 am • 3 0 • view
I do like the hope of the more modern version’s “let us *live* to make men free,” and am now debating with myself which version rules more.
jul 13, 2025, 3:49 am • 12 0 • view
For better or for worse, ‘let us die’ easily wins this
jul 13, 2025, 5:08 am • 7 0 • view
This is also not necessarily not a hopeful sentiment anyway
jul 13, 2025, 5:22 am • 3 0 • view
It's the original. Willing to die for a cause: badass, hardcore, can't ask anything more of a person. Willing to live for a cause: confusing, weak, not asking much of a person at all.
jul 13, 2025, 5:16 am • 19 1 • view
"Dying is easy, son. Living is harder." It's what you do while in life that makes men free. Dying for a cause is romantic, but doesn't get the job done. We must live for a cause to achieve it.
jul 14, 2025, 11:50 am • 1 0 • view
I think the idiom of "live to ???" as shorthand for "devote one's life to ???" is fairly straightforward? Reminds me of Patton and making the other poor bastard die for his.
jul 13, 2025, 5:55 am • 2 0 • view
yes, the original goes much harder. I don't especially mind the alteration, but the original is such a "fuck you, if this is the price of liberty, so be it, I am here", and almost nothing matches it
jul 13, 2025, 6:09 am • 39 1 • view
“Willing to live for a cause: confusing, weak, not asking much of a person at all.” No offense and absolutely not a personal attack, but to the extent that this is true it reflects a lack of imagination. It _is_ confusing. Martyrdom is simple by comparison. But it is not a path of weakness .
jul 13, 2025, 6:58 am • 1 0 • view
No offense to you either, but I think this is a misunderstanding of martyrdom to a cause. It is not the brief moment of death that makes one a martyr. It is the living actions one commits to with full acceptance they may cost one’s life.
jul 13, 2025, 2:46 pm • 1 0 • view
The power of a few who are ready to accept any consequence, even death, in acting to make men free exceeds the power of the many who will only take such actions as will allow them to keep living the lives they know
jul 13, 2025, 2:46 pm • 1 0 • view
In my head cannon it reads as “As He died to make men holy, we give our lives to make men free” You don’t have to die to dedicate your life to a cause (though it may yet come to that).
jul 13, 2025, 6:58 am • 3 0 • view
The thing is every line of this is in the running for hardest. It’s like trying to pick the best track off of Liquid Swords. Speaking of swords, I would go for: “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword”
jul 14, 2025, 2:15 am • 31 0 • view
Also don’t sleep on “the new john brown song” (William Weston Patton, 1861)
jul 14, 2025, 2:18 am • 25 3 • view
I love this song and first heard it at a John Brown wax museum in Harpers Ferry where the last exhibit is him being hanged while the song played over the speakers
jul 14, 2025, 2:36 am • 2 0 • view
The phrase "terrible swift sword" specifically is one I use all the time when talking about John Brown with my students.
jul 14, 2025, 2:17 am • 29 1 • view
Did Lincoln check to see that none of his generals were born by c-section, to fulfill the passage “Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel”?
jul 14, 2025, 2:28 am • 2 0 • view
Do you talk about John Brown’s Body in addition to Battle Hymn of the Republic?
jul 14, 2025, 2:25 am • 3 0 • view
Yes! The transformation from one to the other reflecting the diffusion of Brown's vision into the larger society, and all that...
jul 14, 2025, 2:59 am • 8 0 • view
Mrs. Howe wrote a banger.
jul 14, 2025, 3:07 am • 1 0 • view
> youtu.be/_b5du0TIDS4?...
jul 13, 2025, 4:36 am • 0 0 • view
Totally, although I want this version: youtu.be/aSvH4s-4sCQ?...
jul 14, 2025, 2:07 am • 12 0 • view
Sweet Honey in the Rock, "Sojourner's Battle Hymn" youtu.be/DwSZgLLqPy8?... (You have to open YouTube to listen.)
jul 14, 2025, 2:20 am • 2 0 • view
She also has imo literally the best ever live rendition of the national anthem. Just, my god, what a voice www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n9b...
jul 14, 2025, 2:14 am • 12 0 • view
That is the best version of the anthem, ever. Full stop. Her voice was magical. I remember her song for the Olympics “One Moment in Time.” Still gives me goosebumps.
jul 14, 2025, 2:23 am • 2 0 • view
This is the OG version that they'd play at military base movie theaters before the feature in the early aughts. It's great.
jul 14, 2025, 2:33 am • 2 0 • view
John Brown's Body – another fun adaptation of the Battle Hymn, from the same Civil War era youtu.be/jso1YRQnpCI?...
jul 13, 2025, 3:46 am • 1 0 • view
Solidarity Forever, as well
jul 13, 2025, 11:18 pm • 1 0 • view
*The Battle Hymn* is to American civic identity as *Jerusalem* is to the British
jul 13, 2025, 5:35 pm • 5 1 • view
I’m always on the lookout for version of the song that include that verse. bsky.app/profile/clay...
jul 14, 2025, 2:52 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jul 13, 2025, 4:41 am • 0 0 • view