Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819-October 17, 1910) was the author of the Civil War song, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which was a favorite of President Abraham Lincoln. She was the daughter of a Wall Street banker, and wife of Doctor Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), who ran a school for the blind in Boston, (later the Perkins School for the Blind.) Doctor Howe and Julia together published the anti-slavery journal Commonwealth.
Julia Ward Howe was very active in the abolition of the slavery movement, and later became a leader in the women's suffrage movement. In 1907, she became the first woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She and her husband worked hard against slavery and even entertained John Brown in their home.
In 1861, she traveled to Washington, D.C., and saw the city teeming with military, horses galloping all around and innumerable campfires burning. Sleeping unsoundly one night, she wrote the words to her poem. In February, 1862, the poem, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was published in the Atlantic Monthly Magazine (she received $5 for the poem):
<Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He has loosed the fateful lighting of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a 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.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished 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, Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat: Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea; With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.> 1819JH001
Theodore Roosevelt dedicated his book, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (NY: G.H. Doran Co., 1916, p. v.), to Julia Ward Howe:
<Dedication: This book is dedicated to the memory of Julia Ward Howe, because in the vital matters fundamentally affecting the life of the Republic, she was as good a citizen of the Republic as Washington and Lincoln themselves. She was in the highest sense a good wife and a good mother; and therefore she fulfilled the primary law of our being. She brought up with devoted care and wisdom her sons and her daughters. At the same time she fulfilled her full duty to the commonwealth from the public standpoint. She preached righteousness and she practiced righteousness. She sought the peace that comes as the handmaiden of well doing. She preached that stern and lofty courage of soul which shrinks neither from war nor from any other form of suffering and hardship and danger if it is only thereby that justice can be served. She embodies that trait more essential than any other in the make-up of the men and women of this Republic, the valor of righteousness.> 1819JH002
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1819JH001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Julia Ward Howe, February, 1862, The Battle Hymn of the Republic (Massachusetts: The Atlantic Monthly, February 1862), Vol. IX, No. LII, p. 10, Entered according to Act of Congress by Ticknor and Fields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Mark Galli, Christian History (Carol Stream, IL: Christian History, 1992, Issue 33), Vol. XI, No. 1, p. 19. D.P. Diffine, Ph.D., One Nation Under God-How Close a Separation? (Searcy, Arkansas: Harding University, Belden Center for Private Enterprise Education, 6th edition, 1992), p. 14.
1819JH002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Julia Ward Howe. Theodore Roosevelt's dedication to Julia Ward Howe of his book, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (NY: George H. Doran Co., 1916, p. v.).