JULIA WARD HOWE Julia Ward Howe was one of the truly remarkable personalities of the 19th century. Although most people know of her, if they know of her at all, only as the woman who wrote the words to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, her accomplishments were many and varied. Daughter to a father and wife to a husband both of whom believed a woman's place was in the home, she nonetheless achieved a brilliant career in public life. She did not shirk her domestic duties but did them well, somehow finding the time and energy also to work in many causes, compile a solid literary output, and maintain a lecturing schedule in the last 40 years of her long life that would have worn out people half her age. Her friends were people like Theodore Parker and John Brown, Lucy Stone and Horace Mann, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Edwin Booth, Margaret Fuller and Charles Sumner, and a long list of other notables who made 19th century America such an exciting and dynamic time and place to be alive. A diminutive woman barely five feet tall, she had shocking red hair which she loved and a quality of never going unnoticed. Three days younger than Queen Victoria, she bore a striking resemblance to that monarch when she was got up in her black dress trimmed in white and lace bonnet, the standard costume of her last 40 years. She grew up with horses and lived long enough to ride in and love automobiles. She began writing early in life as the main form of her communication and lived to enjoy the telephone as another wonderful means of communicating. As much as anyone else, it can be said of her that she helped to win the Civil War. Her stirring song engendered in Union soldiers a tremendous morale. When the War ended, she devoted the rest of her life to the cause of trying to prevent war from ever happening again. Julia Ward Howe was born in New York City on May 27, 1819, the fourth child and second daughter of a prominent financier. Ancestry on both sides of the family showed a strong devotion to the American cause. One of her poems, titled Our Country, reflects this deep patriotism that was part of her heritage and her commitment. "On primal rocks she wrote her name, Her towers were reared in holy graves; The golden seed that bore her came Swift-winged with prayer o'er ocean waves. The Forest bowed his solemn crest, And open flung his sylvan doors; Meek rivers led the appointed Guest To clasp the wide-embracing shores; Till, fold by fold, the broidered Land To sell her virgin vestments grew, While sages, strong in heart and hand, Her virtue's fiery girdle drew. O Exile of the wrath of Kings! O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty! The refuge of divinest things, Their record must abide in thee. First in the glories of thy front Let the crown jewel Truth be found; Thy right hand fling with generous wont Love's happy chain to farthest bound. Let Justice with the faultless scales Hold fast the worship of thy sons, Thy commerce spread her shining sails Where no dark tide of rapine runs. So link they ways to those of God, So follow firm the heavenly laws, That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed, And storm-sped angels hail thy cause. O Land, the measure of our prayers, Hope of the world, in grief and wrong! Be thine the blessing of the years, The gift of faith, the crown of song." Julia grew up in privileged circumstances as her family was quite wealthy. She was educated by governesses and then at a ladies school until the age of 16. At that time she began studying at home on her own, beginning a lifetime of intensive and highly disciplined self-study. She read Goethe and Beowulf and wrote essays on them that were later revised for publication. She learned four languages thoroughly-English, French, German, and Italian-and spoke, read, and wrote in these languages fluently and correctly until her death. Once when she was living in Rome, she hired a rabbi from the Jewish Ghetto to teach her Hebrew. Herr daughters tell the story of her requiring other to tie her securely to her armchair for the necessary period of study when she began to learn German in order to be sure that she would do the work! Julia was a student of the piano and took voice lessons. Past the age of 90 she was still playing. Her musical talent aided her in writing poetry, not a small amount of which was turned into song. The young life of Julia Ward Howe was full of tragedy as well as study. Her mother died in Julia's sixth year. Her father died some 15 years later and her beloved brother, Henry, but 12 months after that. Both the men died in her arms. The anguish she felt at these deaths was reported in her diary for decades to come. Her first publication was a translation of Lamartine's Jocelyne. Her Uncle John, who had become her legal and financial guardian on the death of her father, commented about this enterprise: "This is my little girl who knows about books, and writes an article and has it printed, but I wish she knew more about housekeeping." To which Julia responded in her journal, "A sentiment which in after years I had occasion to echo with fervor." Regarding her domestic skills, she liked to tell the story of the occasion when he father insisted that she make some pies in order to learn how. The miseries of pie-making-the mess one gets into, the awful taste of the gooseberries, the hard work of kneading and stewing and rolling out-she described in painful detail, and then added: "My only consolation is that, though I have made them, father will have to eat them." For a young woman of the mid-19th century, there was little choice but to be domestic, even a young woman of means inherited from her father and ably managed by her uncle (and later her husband). Marriage was considered to be and, because of the laws of many states, actually was a necessity for a woman. Julia's husband was Samuel Gridley Howe. He had been a hero of the Greek Revolution and was at the time of their meeting the Director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind. Howe had taught language to Laura Bridgman, a blind deaf mute, the first time this had ever been done. Julia and Samuel were married on April 23, 1843 after several years of courtship. Given her later sentiments about the man and various things she chose to do because of those sentiments, it is worth quoting a comment she made in her journal at the time of the marriage: "I am perfectly happy to sacrifice to one so noble and so earnest the daydreams of my youth." Among the things she sacrificed throughout the marriage was her inheritance and all of her later earnings, which she turned over to Howe till his death in 1876. The daydreams of having a place in public life, of being a writer, of doing things for social good she sacrificed for only a few short years. The couple honeymooned in Europe, traveling through the British Isles and most of the continental European countries before settling in Rome. In March, 1844, the first of their six children was born. Julia Romana Howe was christened by the Howes' close family friend, Theodore Parker, who happened to be in Rome at that time. In 1845 the Howes set up housekeeping in a home a short distance away from the Perkins Institute. The Institute came to be known as Green Peace, which were the words Julia Ward Howe uttered upon seeing it for the first time. The Howes also had a home in Newport, Rhode Island, and for the rest of their marriage it was these two homes that were the center of their lives. Because Samuel did not approve of her literary activities and wanted a domestic wife who would produce many children, and because Julia wanted to expand her dynamic mind in many directions, the marriage was not an easy one. Those who knew them well would not have been surprised at this bitter entry in her diary: "I have never known my husband to approve of any act of mine which I myself valued...Everything has been contemptible in his eyes because not his way of doing things." The tensions in the marriage led Julia to relocate to Rome in 1850. There she came to an understanding of how she might live. She decided to follow the advice of an activist in the Underground Railroad: "If I told no one what I intended to do, I should be enabled to do it." She returned home and became one of the nation's most active women, often simply doing the things her husband did because she shared his social values but doing them quietly and never upstaging him so he would not take offense. He worked for prison reform. So did she. He was an abolitionist and edited a magazine in support of the cause called Commonwealth. She helped with this. Together with Horace Mann, the Howes labored valiantly for educational reform, especially for those who were poor or mentally disturbed or handicapped. Throughout the 1840's and 1850's, Julia Ward Howe was diligently pursuing her literary interests. She was included in Griswold's Female Poets of America by 1847. With encouragement from Theodore Parker and Margaret Fuller, she produced a book of verses of her own, Passion Flowers, in 1853. Most of the poems had been written during her extended stay in Rome. A few more years saw the publication of another book of poetry, Words For the Hour. She was not a brilliant poet, but she could be amusing, as illustrated by this little piece written in the 1850's. Wulf Fries was a young and much-admired pianist in Boston. Miss Mary Bigelow invited Julia to her house "at nine o'clock" to hear him play. She meant nine in the morning but did not specifically say that. Julia thought she meant nine in the evening. Here is the poem. "Miss Mary Big'low, you who seem So debonair and kind, Pray, what the devil do you mean (If I may speak my mind) By asking me to come and hear That Wulf of yours a-Friesing, Then leaving me to cool my heels In manner so unpleasing? With Mrs. Dr. Susan you That eve, forsooth, were tea-ing: Confess you knew that I should come, And from my wrath were fleeing! To Mrs. Dr. Susan's I Had not invited been: So when the maid said, "Best go there!" I answered, "Not so green!" Within the darksome carriage hid I bottled up my beauty, And, rather foolish, hurried home To fireside and duty. It's very pleasant, you may think, On winter nights to roam; But when you next invite abroad, This wolf will freeze at home!" Julia Ward Howe also wrote plays, though not successfully. Leonora,or the World's Own was produced in New York to a storm of critical condemnation. It was widely thought to be indecent and immoral because it portrayed a woman who, unable to kill the lover who has betrayed her, kills herself. A second play, Hippolytus, was written for Edwin Booth but never put on stage. This too was a tale of love spurned and the violence that results from this. Her plays and many of her poems revealed a power and a passion which the outwardly quiet Julia Ward Howe did not publicly display. Her biographers have speculated that they may have been a reflection of her unhappy marriage, her frustrated desire at this period of her life to achieve a recognition of her own. Julia Ward Howe was also passionate about her religion. She was raised as an Episcopalian, but became a zealous Calvinist in her early 20's. Slowly she began to lose faith in this theological stance. Her daughter wrote of the change that came over her mother. "In the quiet of her own room, the bounds of thoughts and of faith stretched wide and wider. Vision often came in a flash: witness the moment when the question of Matthias Claudius, 'and is he not the God of the Japanese?' changed from a shocking suggestion to an eternal truth. Witness also the moment when, after reading Paradise Lost, she saw 'the picture of an eternal evil, of Satan and his ministers subjugated, indeed, by God, but not conquered, and able to maintain against Him an opposition as eternal as His goodness. This appeared to me impossible, and I threw away, once and forever, the thought of the terrible hell which till then had always formed a part of my belief.'" Hearing Theodore Parker and then meeting him, she became a devoted follower. She did not miss his Sunday sermons. Later, because her husband found Parker's services unruly and thus not proper for children to attend, she followed Parker's suggestion and went to hear James Freeman Clarke, to whom she became equally devoted and from whom she sought counsel on many occasions. The coming of the Civil War was to change Julia Ward Howe's life profoundly. At first the war was a romantic venture, as most wars are when they begin. Ladies were escorted to the front in carriages and there photographed in colorful hooped skirts. Fort Sumter was fired on but not a single life was lost. This changed quickly into a bitter war that took more American lives than all our other violent conflicts combined. The Unitarian Henry Whitney Bellows, in support of the Union cause, had started the U.S. Sanitary Commission. The Howes became involved with this work in New England, Julia with the New England Women's Auxiliary (all of whose officers, incidentally, were men). In connection with this work, the Howes journeyed to Washington, D.C. in the autumn of 1861. After reviewing troops near the city, their carriage was surrounded by soldiers. She led them in singing the popular song, "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave...His soul goes marching on." James Freeman Clarke suggested she write some words of her own to this stirring tune. That night, as she lay in bed, the words came to her and, as was her custom when the Muse visited late at night, she wrote in the dark so as not to disturb those sleeping with her, whether it was her husband or her children. Six verses were recorded that night; fortunately, for she forgot everything by morning. Published in the Atlantic Monthly in February, 1862, with the last verse dropped, this poem sung to the tune of John Brown's Body became the marching song of the Union troops. These are the words of the five verses that survived her editing after that night of inspiration.. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the wine-press where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah... I have seen him in the watchfires of an hundred circling camps. They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps. I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His day is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah... I have read a burning Gospel writ in fiery rows of steel. As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal. Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel. Our God is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah... He has sounded out the trumpet that shall never call retreat. He has waked the earth's dull sorrow with a high ecstatic beat. Oh, be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet. Our God is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah.. In the whiteness of the lilies he was born across the sea With a glory in his bosom that shines out on you and me. As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. Our God is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah..." The Civil War produced many songs. None had the power to raise sagging morale, to lift despairing spirits, to send men back to the bloody battlefield as much as The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The fame that came to her with this song she used to further a number of other causes that mattered to her. This fit well with this phase of her life when her children were raised and her husband resigned to her public work. For the remainder of her long life, Julia Ward Howe was primarily a reformer. She did continue to write. There was a biography of her husband after his death in 1876, a death that came shortly after Samuel and Julia reconciled with each other so that her words about him resembled the sweet sounds she had uttered when she married him. She was a forgiving woman. There was also a biography of one of her mentors, Margaret Fuller, and in her later years another collection of verses. But mostly the last 45 years of her life were given over to a wide variety of causes intended to improve society and the lot of oppressed individuals. She drew her ethical foundations for this work from the writings of Fichte, Hegel, Schilling, and especially Kant. She supported herself largely through giving public lectures, for which she carefully worked out what she felt was a fair fee. One hundred dollars was the most she ever charged. Until very near the end of her life, she spent her days crossing back and forth across the continent, speaking at colleges, clubs, and intellectual gatherings about philosophy, language, ethical topics, and religion. She became a preacher, one of the pioneer female pulpit voices in America. She gave her first sermon in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1870, a time when few religions allowed women to mount a pulpit and even the Unitarians and Universalists had only a few women ministers. Although she was never ordained, she preached as often as those who were. Her view of the importance of this work can be seen by the fact that she was a founder of the Woman's Liberal Christian Union, the Woman Preacher's Convention, and the Woman's Ministerial Conference, all of them having the purpose of supporting women in the ministry. Julia Ward Howe drew her inspiration for women in the ministry from the Friends, where in Meeting in silence man and woman alike wait upon the voice of God within to usher forth in spoken truth. She helped to alter the course of American religious experience by bringing closer to reality the equality of woman and man in the Unitarian movement. She was a founder also of the New England Woman's Club, one of its first vice-presidents, and the President with two brief exceptions from 1871- 1910. This club and others like it was formed to help women understand themselves better and to help women appreciate how much they could contribute to society if given the opportunity to do so. Her view was that if men could have clubs, so could women, and they could be used for helping women to get ahead just as men's clubs were used to help men get ahead. Because of this work in forming clubs, Julia Ward Howe was approached to take an active role in the suffrage movement. Her first response was to laugh at the very thought of the cause, but she nonetheless attended the organizing meeting of what became the New England Woman Suffrage Association. She was elected as the first president in 1868. Typical of her attitude to this work and to life itself was her rejoinder to a foolish woman who exclaimed to her, "Dear Mrs. Howe, you are so full of inspiration. It enables you to do so much." To which Mrs. Howe responded tartly, "Inspiration means perspiration." She found this work exhilarating and together with Caroline Severance and Lucy Stone formed the American Woman Suffrage Association. Two decades later this organization merged with the National Woman Suffrage Association. The basis of these groups, in her mind, was that men and women alike have a place in all matters of interest to society. It was her belief that "the two sexes police each other." Julia Ward Howe was also influential in the Association for the Advancement of Women, the purpose of which was to create better opportunities for women in intellectual, moral, and physical ways: better schools and more openings in them for women, more employment opportunities for women in more fields of endeavor, and better medical care for all women. Of all the things that Julia Ward Howe worked for in the last 45 years of her life, none mattered more to her than her work for peace, by which she meant an end to violent conflicts. The woman whose song so inspired the Union soldiers in the Civil War, a song which itself uses violent images as part of a Divine wrath working for righteousness, wrote of her later feelings during that war: "While the war was still in progress I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one that could easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, 'Why do not the mothers of humanity interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life which they alone bear and know the cost?'" She composed a stirring appeal to womanhood to come to a convention that would take up the problem of war and try to find ways to end it. "Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of fears! Say firmly, 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with out own. It says, 'Disarm, Disarm!' The sword of murder is not the balance of justice! Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other, as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace. And each bearing after her own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar but of God." The convention was never held, but Julia Ward Howe continued trying to launch peace efforts among women, who would then influence the men in their lives-husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, cousins-to find non-violent alternatives to the settling of disagreements. In 1876, at a Peace Convention in Philadelphia, her linguistic skills helped teach lessons of peace. German, French, and Italian delegates were unable to deliver their talks because no one would understand them. Julia Ward Howe translated all their speeches into English and saved the Convention. Not long after this she came up with a new idea for promoting peace and non-violence, what she called Mother's Peace Day. She proposed that June 2 be that day. Her vision was of a day when newspapers would publish articles on how to establish peace and mothers who had lost their sons in wars would be honored. The idea was to remember the terrible human cost of war and to dwell on what could be done to resolve differences non-violently. She wrote letters and essays and newspaper articles to promote the idea, which she thought one of her best, but it did not take hold. Early in the 20th century, other people borrowed the name Mother's Day and used it for very different purposes from what Howe had in mind. In 1908, when Julia Ward Howe was 89 years old, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the first woman to be so honored and the last one for 22 years. Two years later, she compiled a survey of how woman suffrage was working in the states where women did have the vote. Writing to editors and ministers in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah, she received 624 answers. 516 of them giving favorable reports. On the day these results were published in the London Times, October 17, 1910, Julia Ward Howe died. Her funeral at the Church of the Disciples in Boston was conducted by the President of the American Unitarian Association, Samuel Eliot. It was attended by literally thousands of people. She was deeply respected and much loved for the efforts she had made right till the end of her life to improve society. Julia Ward Howe was a student, a writer, a wife and mother, a reformer, a remarkable personality whose life bridged the old world and the new. She lived what she once described as the ideal aim in life: to learn, to teach, to serve, to enjoy. She remains to this day an inspiration to us all. 1