On February 2, 1864, a meeting in the interests of the Christian Commission was held in the hall of the House of Representatives at Washington. Hannibal Hamlin, Vice-President of the United States, presided. Abraham Lincoln was present, and an immense audience filled the hall. Various noted men spoke; then Chaplain McCabe made a short speech and, “by request,” sang the “Battle Hymn.” The effect on the great throng was magical. “Men and women sprang to their feet and wept and shouted and sang, as the chaplain led them in that glorious ‘Battle Hymn’; they saw Abraham Lincoln’s tear-stained face light up with a strange glory as he cried out, ‘_Sing it again!_’ and McCabe and all the multitude sang it again.”[29] Doubtless many Grand Army posts have among their records stories of the inspiring influence of this song in times of trouble or danger. Such an anecdote was related at the Western home of Mrs. Caroline M. Severance, where Acker Post had been invited to meet my mother: “Capt. Isaac Mahan affectingly described a certain march on a winter midnight through eastern Tennessee. The troops had been for days without enough clothing, without enough food. They were cold and wet that stormy night, hungry, weary, discouraged, morose. But some one soldier began, in courageous tones, to sing ‘Mine eyes have seen--’ Before the phrase was finished a hundred more voices were heard about the hopeful singer. Another hundred more distant and then another followed until, far to the front and away to the rear, above the splashing tramp of the army through the mud, above the rattle of the horsemen, the rumble of the guns, the creaking of the wagons, and the shouts of the drivers, there echoed, louder and softer, as the rain and wind-gusts varied, the cheerful, dauntless invocation of the ‘Battle Hymn.’ It was heard as if a heavenly ally were descending with a song of succor, and thereafter the wet, aching marchers thought less that night of their wretched selves, thought more of their cause, their families, their country.” Mr. A. J. Bloor, assistant secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission, has given us some vivid pictures of the soldiers as they sang the hymn: