The tune’s journey demonstrates its power to stir feelings of righteousness, no matter the substance of its words. And at a time when how to commemorate the Civil War is a divisive question, the melody’s beloved status among Georgia fans suggests that the culture wars are not always a full-time struggle.

“Associating it with the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ was not really something we did,” said Harvey H. Jackson III, a historian of the South at Jacksonville State University who earned his Ph.D at Georgia. “It was a college football fight song.”

Georgia football fans are not alone in co-opting the melody. The pro-labor chant “Solidarity Forever” is perhaps the most widely known adaptation. In northern England, certain fans sing “Glory, Glory Man United” for their favorite soccer team. In college sports there is “Glory, Glory Colorado,” as well as the less-used “Glory, Glory to Ole Auburn.”

The melody originated in the early 1800s with a hymn, “Grace Reviving the Soul,” according to the book “Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On.” Its lyrics went, “Say brothers will you meet us,” three times, and then, “On Canaan’s happy shore.”

In the spring of 1861, the soldiers of a Boston-based Union regiment pinned the tune to the lyrics: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave/His soul is marching on.” It was an ode to the man who was hanged for raiding the Harpers Ferry Armory in protest of slavery not two years earlier.

Julia Ward Howe, a well-to-do Northern abolitionist and poet, heard the tune that autumn while observing Union troops in Virginia. She decided to prettify the lyrics, which had expanded to include such lines as, “We’ll hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree.”