编辑手记：美国承诺与《共和国战歌》

The question arises: What does the “Battle Hymn,” written to prepare the Union and its soldiers for the terrible fight ahead, say about America itself? Our in-house historian, Jake Lundberg, writes in this issue that the poem is both an explication of the promise of America and an exhortation to persevere on behalf of the country. The “Battle Hymn,” Lund- berg argues, is our unofficial national anthem, one more relevant through the ages than the actual anthem, the difficult- to-sing by-product of a minor war. “By the time of the Great Depression,” he writes, “the ‘Battle Hymn’ had achieved a truly national character. …