Julia Ward Howe | Biography

Julia Ward Howe (27 May 1819-17 October 1910), reformer and author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," was born in New York City to a comfortable banking family and was educated privately. In 1843 she married Samuel Gridley Howe, her senior by some twenty years, and head of the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. Maternal duties were coupled with marital problems, and the witty, scholarly Mrs. Howe sought selfexpression and release from personal tension in verse and plays. Her first work, Passion-Flowers (1854), was published anonymously, to be followed by Words for the Hour and A Trip to Cuba. It was not until December 1861, when she wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," that she captured the public imagination. Various versions of its composition exist. According to one, Mrs. Howe, having watched a review of the Army of the Potomac, returned to Washington with a party of Bostonians who sang "John Brown's Body"; the next morning she penciled the stanzas in her room at Willard's Hotel. According to another version, Mrs. Howe was inspired while visiting a camp near the capital with the party of Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts, and scribbled the lines in a tent. James Freeman Clarke is said to have urged her to write suitable words to the chant. With a title phrased by James T. Fields, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was first published in his Atlantic Monthly (February 1862), and the author was paid $4. Almost immediately the poem achieved tremendous popularity, except perhaps among the soldiers themselves. Its Biblical cadences echoed sonorously; its lines stirred a nation at war; its organ tones swept the North. With a single poem, Julia Ward Howe was on her way to becoming a legend in her time. The periodical press carried her imitative verses and idealistic articles. The Galaxy paid her $10 to $20 a poem. For Is Polite Society Polite" she received a 10% royalty until costs were earned and then 15%. She was a vice-president of the Association of American Authors and the first woman elected (1908) to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Middletown, Rhode Island. As late as 1921, George S. Hellman could describe her as "the most notable woman of letters born and bred in the metropolis of America." Such a statement appears without foundation today. It is more accurate to regard her as the "Dearest Old Lady in America." As she aged she allied herself with universal reforms: woman suffrage and the woman's club movement, peace and prison reform. The diminutive Mrs. Howe, who resembled Queen Victoria, was ubiquitous on the lecture and convention platform, peering over silverrimmed spectacles and urging in a crisp Boston accent her lofty reforms. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was sung or recited at most of her appearances. Though she continued to write essays and studies of social manners for half a century, the moment of genius that had produced "The Battle Hymn" never recurred. It was fittingly sung at Boston's Symphony Hall for her memorial service, and it is still sung today.