Julia Ward Howe ( ; May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was an American author and poet, known for writing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as new lyrics to the song "John Brown's Body," and the original 1870 pacifist Mothers' Day Proclamation. She was also an advocate for abolitionism and a social activist, particularly for women's suffrage.

Early life and education

Julia Ward was born in New York City on May 27, 1819. She was the fourth of seven children. Her father Samuel Ward III was a Wall Street stockbroker, banker, and strict Calvinist Episcopalian. Her mother was the poet Julia Rush Cutler Ward, 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. Though social, she became well-read, as well as scholarly. She met, because of her father's status as a successful banker, Charles Dickens, Charles Sumner, and Margaret Fuller. 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

thumb|left|Julia Ward Howe

Though raised an Episcopalian, Julia became a Unitarian by 1841. In Boston, Ward met Samuel Gridley Howe, a physician and reformer who had founded the Perkins School for the Blind. Howe had courted her, but he had shown an interest in her sister Louisa. In 1843, they married despite their eighteen-year age difference.

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. 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.

Howe was a vegetarian in the late 1830s but was eating meat again by 1843. In 1852, the Howes bought a "country home" with 4.7 acres of land in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, which they called "Oak Glen." They continued to maintain homes in Boston and Newport, but spent several months each year at Oak Glen. Her second anonymous collection, Words for the Hour, appeared in 1857. Several letters on High Newport society were published in the New York Tribune in 1860, as well. 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. After her husband's death in 1876, she found that most of her money had been lost in his bad investments.

Politics

In the early 1870s, Howe was nominated by Massachusetts governor William Claflin as justice of the peace. However, there were uncertainties surrounding her appointment, as many believed women were not fit to hold office. In 1871, the Massachusetts Supreme Court made the decision that women could not hold any judicial offices without explicit authorization from the legislature, thereby nullifying Howe's appointment to justice of the peace. This led to activists petitioning for legislation allowing women to hold office, separate from legislating women's suffrage. Women's supporters believed that petitioning for officeholding before petitioning for a women's suffrage amendment would expedite women's involvement in politics.

Social activism

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 . 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. The song was set to William Steffe's already existing music and Howe's version was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in . It quickly became one of the most popular songs of the Union during the American Civil War.

Howe 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 she decided to become active in reform. 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, Howe focused more on her interest in reform. In 1877 Howe was one of the founders of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston. Unlike many other suffragists at the time, Howe supported the final version of the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended the right to vote to African Americans, but omitted the inclusion of language barring discrimination against women. She contributed to it for twenty years. 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 "Mothers' Day" be celebrated on June 2. Her efforts were not successful, and by 1893 she was wondering if July 4 could be remade into "Mothers' Day". 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.

Death and legacy

thumb|Howe in 1909

thumb|The 1913 bas-relief plaque of Howe by Cyrus Dallin

Howe died of pneumonia on October 17, 1910, at her Portsmouth home, Oak Glen at the age of 91. She is buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 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.

In 1912, the members of the New England Women's Club commissioned a marble bas-relief plaque of Howe in profile featuring the opening words of The Battle Hymn of the Republic by sculptor Cyrus Dallin. It was originally installed to the left wall of the then main hall of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1913.

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

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

Several buildings are associated with her name:

  • The Julia Ward Howe School of Excellence in Chicago's Austin community is named in her honor.
  • The Howe neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was named for her.
  • The Julia Ward Howe Academics Plus Elementary School in Philadelphia was named in her honor in 1913.
  • Her Rhode Island home, Oak Glen, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
  • Her Boston home is a stop on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
  • Julia Ward Howe Elementary School, located in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Ancestry

Awards and honors

  • January 28, 1908, at age 88, Howe became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
  • 1970, inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
  • In 1998, inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Selected works

Poetry

  • Passion-Flowers (1854)
  • Words for the Hour (1857)
  • From Sunset Ridge: Poems Old and New (1898)
  • Later Lyrics (1866)
  • At Sunset (published posthumously, 1910)
  • Modern Society (essays, 1881) (autobiography, 1899)