orig. Julia Ward
born May 27, 1819, New York, N.Y., U.S.
died Oct. 17, 1910, Newport, R.I.
U.S. abolitionist and social reformer.
Born to a well-to-do family, she was educated privately. In 1843 she married educator Samuel Gridley Howe and took up residence in Boston. For a while she and her husband published the Commonwealth , an abolitionist newspaper. During a visit to an army camp near Washington, D.C., in 1861, she wrote a poem, "Battle Hymn of the Republic," to be set to an old folk tune also used for "John Brown's Body." Published in February 1862 in The Atlantic Monthly , it became the semiofficial Civil War song of the Union Army, and Howe became famous. After the war she involved herself in the woman suffrage movement, helping to found and serving as president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association (186877, 18931910). She also wrote travel books, biography, drama, verse, and children's songs and edited Woman's Journal (187090). In 1908 she became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Julia Ward Howe, 1902.
By courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.