<P> 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 . The lyrics were soon prepared for publication by members of the battalion, together with publisher C.S. Hall . They selected and polished verses they felt appropriate, and may even have enlisted the services of a local poet to help polish and create verses . </P> <P> The official histories of the old First Artillery and of the 55th Artillery (1918) also record the Tiger Battalion's role in creating the John Brown Song, confirming the general thrust of Kimball's version with a few additional details . </P> <P> 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 . Rufus R. Dawes, then in command of Company "K" of the 6th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, stated in his memoirs that the man who started the singing was Sergeant John Ticknor of his company . Howe's companion at the review, The Reverend James Freeman Clarke, suggested to Howe that she write new words for the fighting men's song . 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". Of the writing of the lyrics, Howe remembered: </P> <P> 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 . Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, "I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them ." So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before . I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper . </P>

Who wrote the battle hymm of the republic