by Diego Morra
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, popularly known as Mark Twain, would have condemned the Jan. 3, 2026 attack in Caracas, Venezuela by US forces and the snatching of President Nicolas Maduro. In fact, Twain was so disgusted by the US aggression in the Philippines which killed a million Filipinos, thousands of in the howling wilderness of Samar after US forces were decimated in surprise raid, and the hundreds of Muslims massacred in Bud Dajo.
Recalling Mark Twain campaign against US imperialism following the purchase of the Philippines after the bogus Battle of Manila Bay in 1898, the conquest of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam and the snatching of Hawaii after the scuttling of its monarchy, the Atlantic ran an article about Twain’s version of the imperialist “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a reworking of the nobler lyrics written by Julia Ward Howe, an abolitionist and suffragist, in 1861. Howe’s lyrics were actually based on the lyrics of “John Brown’s Body,” written by Union soldiers and set to the tune of the extant Methodist camp meeting song, “Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us.”
The soldiers, members of the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry Battalion, also known as the “Tiger” Battalion, created the song to humorously refer to both the famous abolitionist John Brown who was captured and executed in 1859 for stealing rifles from an armory in Harper’s Ferry to arm revolting slaves and for a Sgt. John Brown in their own company. The lyrics for the marching song follows: ///John Brown’s body lies a-molderin’ in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-molderin’ in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-molderin’ in the grave,, His soul goes marching on!/// Chorus: Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His soul is marching on!///He captured Harper’s Ferry with his nineteen men so true. He frightened old Virginia ’til she trembled through and through. They hanged him for a traitor, themselves the traitor’s crew. His soul goes marching on///Chorus: The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin’ kindly down, The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin’ kindly down, The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin’ kindly down, On the grave of old John Brown///Chorus: He’s gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord; He’s gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord; He’s gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord; His soul goes marching on!///
Writing for the Atlantic on Jan. 8, 2026, Jake Lundberg noted the Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was first published in The Atlantic. Twain noted that while Howe’s lyrics were “beautiful and sublime,” they needed radical revision. In 1901, three years into the American war against Filipinos, Twain wrote: “Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword///He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored.” Lundberg said Twain created “a bandit gospel for a fiery gospel; instead of truth and God, lust and greed go marching on.” Twain’s satire worked because it exposed the hypocrisies of America’s first embrace of an overseas empire at the turn of the 20th century, Lundberg explained. “Advocates of intervention spoke confidently of spreading democracy; Twain and other anti-imperialists answered by holding those professed ideals up against the anti-democratic reality of conquest and violence. This pattern of argument would persist through the Iraq War,” he added. “The guiding questions were always around what we really believed we were doing in other countries—spreading democracy, or simply exploiting people and advancing our interests? With this weekend’s ouster of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, America has crossed into a new era, in which leaders no longer bother with the pretense,” Lundberg argued.
Twain did not actually publish his version of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” but fellow anti-imperialists, workers and Americans opposed to expansionism and the implementation of the interventionist 1823 Monroe Doctrine, including folk singers like the Chad Mitchell Trio and other bands propagated his reworked Methodist and Union marching song. The Twain lyrics:///Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword///He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored///He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored///His lust is marching on///I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps///They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps///I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps///His night is marching on///I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel///As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal///Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel///Lo, Greed is marching on!///We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat///Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat///O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!///Our god is marching on!///In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch///With a longing in his bosom—and for others’ goods an itch///As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich///Our god is marching on.
“For the champions of empire, 1898 presented a kind of deliverance. Americans would take their rightful place on the global stage alongside the Europeans, bringing democracy, civilization, commerce, and Christianity with them,” Lundberg wrote. The imperialists thought American workers of all kinds would be rescued from what many believed to be the dangers of excessive production, with ready markets for their goods beyond the US. In fact, the Philippines was supposed to be the springboard to the lucrative China market. Imperialism needed the divine to bless its bloody carnage, with the arch-imperialist Senator Albert Beveridge claiming that God “has marked us as his chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.” He further roared: “We are trustees of the world’s progress, guardians of its righteous peace.” Not to be left behind, the Atlantic editor Walter Hines Page said the Spanish-American War of 1898 was “a necessary act of surgery for the health of civilization” and the Philippines bled, becoming a river of buried tigers.
For 30 pieces of silver to the Spaniards, the US imperialists ran the Philippines (as Donald Trump would now “run” Venezuela), exploited its natural resources, profited from the labor of Filipino workers and the new colony became what Lundberg described as the laboratory for a benevolent theory of American empire. “If we can benefit those remote peoples,” President William McKinley had asked, “who will object?” But his promise that “our priceless principles undergo no change under a tropical sun” did not survive the Pacific crossing, Lundberg noted. “American forces worked to crush something they knew well—a popular uprising against colonial rule. The methods the army employed were brutal, including a water torture and rounding suspected rural insurgents into concentration camps—a tactic practiced by the Spanish in Cuba that had helped galvanize American support for war there,” the Atlantic writer noted.
If Mark Twain were alive today, he would have condemned Donald Trump to high heavens, not only for the Venezuela attack but for trying to bully Latin America into submission, exploit the natural resources of Venezuela, Colombia, Guyana, Mexico and Cuba. He would have denounced the wholesale violation of the human rights of immigrants in America who work for a pittance as native-born Americans reject manual work and meager pay. Trump himself profits from the low wages of immigrant labor while US agribusiness corporations become competitive overseas due to low farm wages. Immigrant labor, particularly those from Mexico, fed America during World War II. Now, Trump is threatening to attack Mexico because only 1% of the Epstein files has been released, with his justice department bowdlerizing the files to hide the body of Trump’s crimes. ///Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword///He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored///He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored///His lust is marching on///#
