Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), American author and reformer, wrote the words for "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Julia Ward, the daughter of a noted banker, was born in New York City on May 27, 1819, and was privately educated there. Rejecting a life of cultivated leisure, she married Samuel Gridley Howe, a physician, reformer, and pioneer teacher of the blind. They lived in Boston and edited the Commonwealth, an antislavery paper. Howe's first book, a collection of poems, was published in 1854; thereafter she wrote many volumes of verse, travel sketches, and essays. None was so popular as her patriotic song, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic, " which she composed in a tent one night after visiting military camps. Because of this song she became one of the best-known and most widely honored women in America.

Though Howe was an ardent unionist in the Civil War, other conflicts repelled her. As a Francophile, she was horrified by the Franco-Prussian War, and she became president of the American Branch of the Woman's International Peace Association in 1871. It failed, as women were not yet ready for such work.

Howe did better at interesting them in more domestic concerns. She helped found the New England Woman's Club in 1868. That same year she organized the New England Woman Suffrage Association and later the American Woman Suffrage Association. The latter was a product of the conflict within the suffrage movement over strategy and principles. New York feminists, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, wanted the cause to embrace many social and political issues, from the marriage question to labor unions. More conservative Boston feminists, such as Mrs. Howe and Lucy Stone, focused on woman's rights alone. They encouraged men to join, whereas the New Yorkers believed that men compromised their efforts. For over 20 years these differences divided the movement into two organizations: the American Woman Suffrage Association and the Stanton-Anthony National Woman Suffrage Association. After the National came around to the American's point of view, they united in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Thus, Howe's cautious strategy was adopted, though it would take another 30 years to get woman suffrage.

Howe died on Oct. 17, 1910. She is remembered chiefly for "The Battle Hymn, " in some ways the least of her accomplishments. Yet there is justice in this. She wrote it to help free the slaves; later it became the anthem of the woman suffrage movement. Even later it was used by civil rights workers. In 1968, when Senator Robert Kennedy's funeral train carried his body from New York to Washington, "The Battle Hymn" was sung as a dirge by mourners.

Further Reading

Julia Ward Howe's memoir, Reminiscences, 1819-1899 (1899), is useful. The standard biography is Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott, Julia Ward Howe (2 vols., 1915). See also Louise Hall Tharp, Three Saints and a Sinner: Julia Ward Howe, Louisa, Annie, and Sam Ward (1956).

Additional Sources

Clifford, Deborah Pickman, Mine eyes have seen the glory: a biography of Julia Ward Howe, Boston: Little, Brown, 1979.

Grant, Mary Hetherington, Private woman, public person: an account of the life of Julia Ward Howe from 1819-1868, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Pub., 1994.

Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, Atlanta, Ga.: Cherokee Pub. Co., 1990. □

Julia Ward Howe 1819–1910, American author and social reformer, b. New York City. She assisted her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe , in his philanthropic projects and in editing the Boston Commonwealth, an abolitionist paper. Her first book of poetry was published in 1854. Mrs. Howe wrote and lectured in behalf of woman suffrage, African-American emancipation, and other causes, and helped found a world peace organization. In Nov., 1861, after watching Union troops march into battle, she wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," her most famous work. It was published in the Atlantic Monthly in Feb., 1862. The American Academy of Arts and Letters elected her as its first woman member (1908). Besides writing several volumes of poetry, she was the author of Sex and Education (1874), Modern Society (1881), and a biography of Margaret Fuller (1883).

Bibliography: See her Reminiscences, 1819–1899 (1899); biographies by her daughters L. E. Richards and M. H. Elliott (1915, repr. 1970) and by V. H. Ziegler (2004); L. H. Tharp, Three Saints and a Sinner (1956).

Howe, Julia Ward (1819–1910), poet and lecturer on social reform, was particularly interested in Abolitionism and woman suffrage. With her husband, Samuel G. Howe, she edited the Boston Commonwealth, an antislavery paper, and among her books are Sex and Education (1874), Modern Society (1881), and a life of Margaret Fuller (1883). She is famous as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (1862). She was the sister of Sam Ward and the mother of Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott. Her collected poems include Passion Flowers (1854) and Later Lyrics (1866).

Battle Hymn of the Republic a Civil War-era hymn written in November 1861 for Union soldiers by Julia Ward Howe. She composed the lyrics after touring army camps near Washington, D.C., and hearing “John Brown's Body.” It was published in 1862 in The Atlantic Monthly, whose editor, James T. Field, is credited for naming the song. Its predecessors are “Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us” (1858), “John Brown” (July 1861), and “Glory, Hallelujah” (July 1861), to which it was set and with which it was first printed in 1862.

Battle Hymn of the Republic. Poem by Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) written 1862, first line being ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord’, sung to the tune of John Brown's Body. Last verse beginning ‘He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave’ is not in orig., authorship being unknown.