Howe, Julia Ward, 1819-1910

Julia Ward Howe (/haʊ/;[1] May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was an American poet and author, known for writing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the original 1870 pacifist Mother's Day Proclamation. She was also an advocate for abolitionism and a social activist, particularly for women's suffrage.
Early life and education
Howe was born in New York City. She was the fourth of seven children. Her father Samuel Ward III was a Wall Street stockbroker, banker, and strict Calvinist. Her mother was the poet Julia Rush Cutler,[2] related to Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox" of the American Revolution. She died during childbirth when Howe was five.

Howe was educated by private tutors and schools for young ladies until she was sixteen. Her eldest brother, Samuel Cutler Ward, traveled in Europe and brought home a private library. She had access to these books, many contradicting the Calvinistic view.[3] She became well-read,[4][5] though social as well as scholarly. She met, because of her father's status as a successful banker, Charles Dickens, Charles Sumner, and Margaret Fuller.[4]

Her brother, Sam, married into the Astor family,[6] allowing him great social freedom that he shared with his sister. The siblings were cast into mourning with the death of their father in 1839, the death of their brother, Henry, and the deaths of Samuel's wife, Emily, and their newborn child.

Personal life

Julia Ward Howe
Though raised an Episcopalian, Julia became a Unitarian by 1841.[7] In Boston, Ward met Samuel Gridley Howe, a physician and reformer who had founded the Perkins School for the Blind.[2][8] Howe had courted her, but he had shown an interest in her sister Louisa.[9] In 1843, they married despite their eighteen-year age difference.[2] She gave birth to their first child while honeymooning in Europe. She bore their last child in December 1859 at the age of forty. They had six children: Julia Romana Howe (1844–1886), Florence Marion Howe (1845–1922), Henry Marion Howe (1848–1922), Laura Elizabeth Howe (1850–1943), Maud Howe (1855–1948), and Samuel Gridley Howe, Jr. (1859–1863). Howe was an aunt of novelist Francis Marion Crawford.

Howe raised her children in South Boston, while her husband pursued his advocacy work. She hid her unhappiness with their marriage, earning the nickname "the family champagne" from her children.[10] She made frequent visits to Gardiner, Maine, where she stayed at "The Yellow House," a home built originally in 1814 and later home to her daughter Laura.[11]

In 1852, the Howes bought a "country home" with 4.7 acres of land in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, which they called "Oak Glen."[12] They continued to maintain homes in Boston and Newport, but spent several months each year at Oak Glen.[12]

Career
Writing

Portrait of Julia Ward Howe, by John Elliott, 1925
She attended lectures, studied foreign languages, and wrote plays and dramas. Howe had published essays on Goethe, Schiller and Lamartine before her marriage in the New York Review and Theological Review.[2] Passion-Flowers was published anonymously in 1853. The book collected personal poems and was written without the knowledge of her husband, who was then editing the Free Soil newspaper The Commonwealth.[13] Her second anonymous collection, Words for the Hour, appeared in 1857.[2] She went on to write plays such as Leonora, The World's Own, and Hippolytus. These works all contained allusions to her stultifying marriage.[2]

She went on trips including several for missions. In 1860, she published A Trip to Cuba, which told of her 1859 trip. It had generated outrage from William Lloyd Garrison, an abolitionist, for its derogatory view of Blacks. Howe believed it was right to free the slaves but did not believe in racial equality.[14] Several letters on High Newport society were published in the New York Tribune in 1860, as well.[2]

Howe's being a published author troubled her husband greatly, especially due to the fact that her poems many times had to do with critiques of women's roles as wives, her own marriage, and women's place in society.[15][16] Their marriage problems escalated to the point where they separated in 1852. Samuel, when he became her husband, had also taken complete control of her estate income. Upon her husband's death in 1876, she had found that through a series of bad investments, most of her money had been spent.[4]

Howe's writing and social activism were greatly shaped by her upbringing and married life. Much study has gone into her difficult marriage and how it influenced her work, both written and active.[citation needed]

Social activism

The Battle Hymn of the Republic
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"The Battle Hymn of the Republic", performed by Frank C. Stanley, Elise Stevenson, and a mixed quartet in 1908
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
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"The Battle Hymn of the Republic", modern arrangement arranged by Eric Richards, performed by United States Air Force Band Airmen of Note
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She was inspired to write "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" after she and her husband visited Washington, D.C., and met Abraham Lincoln at the White House in November 1861. During the trip, her friend James Freeman Clarke suggested she write new words to the song "John Brown's Body", which she did on November 19.[17] The song was set to William Steffe's already existing music and Howe's version was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. It quickly became one of the most popular songs of the Union during the American Civil War.

Now that Howe was in the public eye, she produced eleven issues of the literary magazine, Northern Lights, in 1867. That same year she wrote about her travels to Europe in From the Oak to the Olive. After the war, she focused her activities on the causes of pacifism and women's suffrage. By 1868, Julia's husband no longer opposed her involvement in public life, so Julia decided to become active in reform.[2] She helped found the New England Women's Club and the New England Woman Suffrage Association. She served as president for nine years beginning in 1868.[18] In 1869, she became co-leader with Lucy Stone of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Then, in 1870, she became president of the New England Women's Club. After her husband's death in 1876, she focused more on her interests in reform. In 1877 Howe was one of the founders of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.[19] She was the founder and from 1876 to 1897 president of the Association of American Women, which advocated for women's education.[20]

In 1872, she became the editor of Woman's Journal, a widely-read suffragist magazine founded in 1870 by Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell.[21] She contributed to it for twenty years.[2] That same year, she wrote her "Appeal to womanhood throughout the world", later known as the Mother's Day Proclamation,[22] which asked women around the world to join for world peace. (See Category:Pacifist feminism.) She authored it soon after she evolved into a pacifist and an anti-war activist. In 1872, she asked that "Mother's Day" be celebrated on the 2nd of June.[23][24][25][26] Her efforts were not successful, and by 1893 she was wondering if the 4th of July could be remade into "Mother's Day".[23] In 1874, she edited a coeducational defense titled Sex and Education.[18] She wrote a collection about the places she lived in 1880 called Modern Society. In 1883, Howe published a biography of Margaret Fuller. Then, in 1885 she published another collection of lectures called Is Polite Society Polite? ("Polite society" is a euphemism for the upper class.) In 1899 she published her popular memoirs, Reminiscences.[2] She continued to write until her death.

In 1881, Howe was elected president of the Association for the Advancement of Women. Around the same time, Howe went on a speaking tour of the Pacific coast and founded the Century Club of San Francisco. In 1890, she helped found the General Federation of Women's Clubs, to reaffirm the Christian values of frugality and moderation.[2] From 1891 to 1893, she served as president for the second time of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. Until her death, she was president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association. From 1893 to 1898 she directed the General Federation of Women's Clubs, and headed the Massachusetts Federation of Women's Clubs.[2] Howe spoke at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago reflecting on the question, What is Religion?.[27] In 1908 Julia was the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a society; its goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art.[28]

Death and legacy

Howe in 1909
Howe died of pneumonia October 17, 1910, at her Portsmouth home, Oak Glen at the age of 91.[29] She is buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[30] At her memorial service approximately 4,000 people sang "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as a sign of respect as it was the custom to sing that song at each of Julia's speaking engagements.[31]

After her death, her children collaborated on a biography,[32] published in 1916. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.[33]

In 1987, she was honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a 14¢ Great Americans series postage stamp issued in 1987.[34]

Several buildings are associated with her name:

The Julia Ward Howe School of Excellence in Chicago's Austin community is named in her honor.[35]
The Howe neighborhood in Minneapolis, MN was named for her.[36]
The Julia Ward Howe Academics Plus Elementary School in Philadelphia was named in her honor in 1913.[37]
Her Rhode Island home, Oak Glen, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.[38]
Her Boston home is a stop on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.[39]

Writer, lecturer, abolitionist and suffragist, Julia Ward Howe not only authored the Civil War anthem “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” but she also co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association.

Born on May 27, 1819, Howe was the fourth of seven children of prominent New York City banker Samuel Ward and poet Julia Rush Ward. Ward was a descendant of Roger Williams, who founded the Rhode Island colony in 1636. Her mother died in childbirth when Howe was five years old; thereafter, her rearing and education fell to an aunt, who ensured her exposure to literature, languages and science. Early on, Howe developed a love of poetry and by age twenty was anonymously published in literary magazines.

When her father died in 1839, Howe sought solace by visiting friends in Boston. As a wealthy young woman, she traveled in social circles that included noted writers, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller.

In 1843, while touring the New England Institute for the Blind with poet friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Howe met and became smitten with its director Dr. Samuel Howe, who was nearly twenty years her senior. They quickly married and had six children. The marriage was troubled from the start; Howe enjoyed writing and socializing while her husband preferred the solitude of his studies at the Perkins Institute and wanted her to be content with homemaking. In 1848, she garnered some acclaim for her published poetry, and the couple did work together on a journal advocating the end of slavery. As the marriage faltered, she wrote dark poems and plays about her unhappiness with her husband.

During the Civil War, Howe worked for the US Sanitary Commission, which promoted clean and hygienic conditions for soldiers and hospitals. In 1862, Atlantic Monthly published Howe’s poem, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which brought lasting fame and is considered the Union’s Civil War anthem.

After the war, an active clubwoman, Howe established and led major women’s organizations. She championed the vote for women, helping to found the New England Suffrage Association in 1868, as well as the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) divided over whether to support the 15th Amendment, which promised voting rights for black men but not all women. Howe joined Lucy Stone in founding the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which championed the Fifteenth Amendment, and broke with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s NWSA. Howe also helped establish the AWSA’s newspaper, the Woman’s Journal, which she edited for 20 years. In 1889, the groups reunited as the National American Woman Suffrage Association with the singular goal of votes for women.

Howe also became a peace advocate, presiding over the Women’s International Peace Association in 1871. Known as the “Dearest Old Lady in America,” she lectured widely, particularly for the Unitarian Church, founding clubs wherever she went. In 1873, she organized the Association for the Advancement of Women to improve women’s education and entry into the professions.

After her husband’s death in 1876, Howe wrote a flattering biography of him, despite his deathbed confession of multiple adulterous affairs. She continued to publish poems, essays, and books throughout the 1880s and was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1908. She also received an honorary degree from Smith College.

Julia Ward Howe, née Julia Ward, (born May 27, 1819, New York, New York, U.S.—died October 17, 1910, Newport, Rhode Island), American author and lecturer best known for her “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Julia Ward came of a well-to-do family and was educated privately. In 1843 she married educator Samuel Gridley Howe and took up residence in Boston. Always of a literary bent, she published her first volume of poetry, Passion Flowers, in 1854; this and subsequent works—including a poetry collection, Words for the Hour (1857), a play, Leonora; or, the World’s Own, produced in 1857, and A Trip to Cuba (1860)—had little success.

For a while Howe and her husband published the Commonwealth, an abolitionist newspaper, but for the most part he kept her out of his affairs and strongly opposed her involving herself in any sort of public life. In February 1862 The Atlantic Monthly published her poem “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” to be set to an old folk tune also used for “John Brown’s Body.” The song, written during a visit to an army camp near Washington, D.C., in 1861, became the semiofficial Civil War song of the Union Army, and Howe became famous.

After the war Howe involved herself in the woman suffrage movement. In 1868 she helped form and was elected the first president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association, an office she held until 1877, and from 1869 she took a leading role in the American Woman Suffrage Association. She helped found the New England Women’s Club in 1868 and succeeded Caroline M. Severance as its president in 1871. She was later active in the General Federation of Women’s Clubs International. She also took up the cause of peace and in 1870 published her “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World,” a call for an international conference of women on the subject of peace. In 1871 she became first president of the American branch of the Woman’s International Peace Association.

Howe continued to write throughout her life, publishing travel books, poetry, collections of essays, and biographies. She founded a short-lived literary journal, Northern Lights, in 1867 and was a founder in 1870 and an editor for 20 years thereafter of the Woman’s Journal. She was a frequent traveler until extreme old age. She was again president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association from 1893 to 1910. In 1908 she became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was an American public institution by the time of her death. Of her children, the best known was the writer Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards.