Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) was an American poet, abolitionist, and suffragist who wrote Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Mother’s Day Proclamation.
Julia Ward Howe stands as one of America’s most influential voices in literature, social reform, and women’s rights. Born on May 27, 1819, in New York City, she became immortalized as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the stirring Civil War anthem that transformed the Union’s cause into a sacred mission. Beyond this singular achievement, Howe dedicated her 91 years to advancing abolitionism, women’s suffrage, pacifism, and social justice, earning recognition as one of the most prominent reformers of the 19th century. Her life embodied remarkable contrasts—born into wealth yet committed to justice for all, trapped in a controlling marriage yet emerging as a champion of women’s independence, celebrated for wartime inspiration yet devoted to peace. She authored the original Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870 as a call for international peace, co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association, and became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1908. Her legacy extends far beyond any single poem or proclamation; it encompasses a lifetime of fearless advocacy that helped reshape American society.
Quick Facts About Julia Ward Howe
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Julia Ward Howe |
| Date of Birth | May 27, 1819 |
| Place of Birth | New York City, New York |
| Date of Death | October 17, 1910 (aged 91) |
| Place of Death | Portsmouth, Rhode Island |
| Profession | Poet, Author, Abolitionist, Suffragist, Social Reformer |
| Spouse | Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe (m. 1843–1876) |
| Children | 6 (including Maud Howe Elliott) |
| Famous For | Battle Hymn of the Republic, Mother’s Day Proclamation |
| Major Achievement | First woman elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters |
| Burial | Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts |
Privileged Beginnings in New York Society
Julia was born into one of New York City’s most prominent families as the fourth of seven children. Her father, Samuel Ward III, was a successful Wall Street stockbroker and banker known for his strict Calvinist Episcopalian beliefs. Her mother, Julia Rush Cutler Ward, was a gifted poet descended from Francis Marion, the legendary “Swamp Fox” of the American Revolution. This literary heritage would profoundly influence Julia’s own poetic talents. Tragedy struck when Julia was only five years old. Her mother died during childbirth, leaving her father to raise seven children alone. His response to grief manifested in intensified religious fervor and strict household rules. He banned many books and “sinful indulgences” including theater, creating an austere environment that paradoxically fueled Julia’s rebellious spirit and hunger for knowledge. Following the customs for wealthy girls of her era, Julia was educated at home by private tutors through age sixteen while her brothers attended formal schools. She proved an imperfect student, later blaming what she called “a certain over-romantic and imaginative turn of mind” for her attitude toward tutors. However, this independent streak served her well—she taught herself multiple languages and became a voracious reader, mastering Urdu, Telugu, English, Bengali, and Persian. Her eldest brother, Samuel Cutler Ward, traveled extensively in Europe and brought home a private library that became Julia’s window to the wider world.
Literary Awakening and Early Writing
From an early age, Julia displayed exceptional literary talent. She began writing poetry as a child, and by age twenty, her work was being published anonymously in literary magazines. This early success validated her creative ambitions despite her father’s expectations that she might pursue mathematics or science instead. When her father died in 1839, the twenty-year-old Julia sought solace by visiting friends in Boston. As a wealthy young woman with intellectual interests, she moved in elite social circles that included some of America’s greatest minds—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Charles Dickens, and other luminaries of the literary and philosophical world. These relationships would shape her thinking and provide the foundation for her later activism.
A Fairy Tale Marriage That Became a Cage
During her Boston visit in 1841, Julia met Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, a renowned reformer and headmaster of the Perkins School for the Blind. Dr. Howe had received a knighthood for his service during the Greek Revolution, and when Julia first saw him riding toward her, she described him as “a noble rider on a noble steed,” like a dashing knight from a fairy tale. They married on April 23, 1843, despite their eighteen-year age difference—she was twenty-four, he was forty-two. The fairy tale, however, ended abruptly. Dr. Howe proved to be a controlling husband who expected his wife to abandon her creative pursuits and become the perfect domestic spouse and mother. He disapproved of her literary ambitions, actively disrupting her writing efforts and dictating her behavior. Under the laws of the time, Julia’s children legally belonged to her husband, not to her, stripping her of maternal rights. Adding to the emotional complexity, Dr. Howe remained physically and emotionally distant from his wife while sharing deep emotional intimacy with his close male companion, future Senator Charles Sumner. Despite these difficulties, Julia bore six children: Julia Romana (1844–1886), Florence Marion (1845–1922), Henry Marion (1848–1922), Laura Elizabeth (1850–1943), Maud (1855–1948), and Samuel Gridley Jr. (1859–1863). She gave birth to their first child while honeymooning in Europe and bore their last when she was forty years old. The loss of young Samuel Jr. to diphtheria in 1863 at age three devastated her. Through all these challenges, Howe poured her frustrations into her writing, producing fiery, autobiographical poetry that revealed the depths of her unhappiness.
One Night in November: Creating the Battle Hymn
The moment that would define Julia Ward Howe’s place in American history came during a visit to Washington, D.C., in November 1861. The Civil War was underway, and Julia and her husband traveled to the capital to assess the war effort and meet with President Abraham Lincoln at the White House. On November 17, they visited Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia, to observe a review of Union troops. Returning to their hotel that evening, Julia rode by Upton’s Hill and saw hundreds of campfires where soldiers were camped. She heard them singing “John Brown’s Body,” a popular tune honoring the abolitionist leader executed at Harpers Ferry in 1859. The melody, borrowed from an old Methodist hymn “Say, Brothers, Will You Meet Us?” by William Steffe, was stirring, but Julia found the words crude and uninspiring. Her friend James Freeman Clarke suggested she write new lyrics that would be more worthy of the tune. That night, Julia awoke from sleep with verses running through her mind. As she later recalled, “So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen… I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.” On November 19, 1861, she wrote what would become “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” transforming a simple marching song into a sacred anthem that framed the Union cause as divine justice. In February 1862, The Atlantic Monthly published her poem, paying her just five dollars. The impact, however, was priceless. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” spread rapidly through Union armies and became the semi-official anthem of the Union cause. Its powerful Biblical imagery—”Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”—elevated the war from a political conflict to a moral crusade. The hymn’s line noting that Christ was “born of woman” subtly asserted women’s importance in the divine order, foreshadowing Howe’s later feminist activism.
Finding Power Through Fame
The success of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” granted Howe something she had never possessed—public recognition that her husband could not suppress. The fame gave her leverage in her troubled marriage. She simply began ignoring Dr. Howe’s protests when she accepted speaking invitations, knowing her celebrity protected her from his complete control. In 1867, emboldened by her success, Howe produced eleven issues of a literary magazine called Northern Lights and published From the Oak to the Olive, chronicling her European travels. She was emerging from her husband’s shadow and claiming her own voice. Despite his objections, Samuel had relied heavily on Julia as editor and writer for his newspaper, The Commonwealth, which advocated for the abolition movement. This experience gave her valuable editorial skills and deepened her commitment to social justice.
The Mother’s Day Proclamation: A Call for Peace
By 1870, Julia Ward Howe had witnessed devastating carnage—the American Civil War had claimed over 600,000 lives, and the Franco-Prussian War overseas added another 200,000 casualties in a conflict lasting mere months. The sheer scale of death from modern warfare, combined with the ongoing suffering of Civil War veterans and the loss of her own son, transformed Howe’s thinking about war and women’s roles in society. She came to see what she called “the august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities.” If men would always resolve conflicts through what she termed “mutual murder,” then women—mothers who gave life—must stand against war. She wrote her “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World,” later known as the Mother’s Day Proclamation, calling for women globally to unite for peace. “Arise, women!” Howe commanded in the proclamation. “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.'” She translated the proclamation into several languages and traveled internationally, urging women to join in a Mothers’ Day for Peace. In 1872, Howe organized the first Mothers’ Peace Day celebration in Boston on June 2, and for thirty years Americans observed this day. Her vision of Mother’s Day as a call to political action for peace and justice was quite different from today’s commercialized holiday, though her advocacy planted seeds that would eventually flower into the modern observance, albeit with altered meaning.
Champion of Women’s Suffrage
In 1868, the same year her husband finally stopped opposing her public involvement, Julia Ward Howe threw herself into the women’s suffrage movement—a cause that would define the rest of her long life. She came to realize, as she later wrote, that women should be “free agents, fully sharing with man every human right and every human responsibility.” This discovery was, she said, “like the addition of a new continent to the map of the world.” The women’s suffrage movement had split over the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted voting rights to Black men but not to women. Unlike some suffragists who opposed the amendment for excluding women, Howe supported it, viewing Black men’s suffrage as the immediate priority. In 1869, she joined Lucy Stone in founding the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which supported the Fifteenth Amendment while continuing to fight for women’s voting rights. Howe helped establish the New England Woman Suffrage Association in 1868, serving as president until 1877. In 1872, she became editor of Woman’s Journal, a widely-read suffragist magazine founded by Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, contributing to it for twenty years. She worked alongside legendary suffragists including Lucy Stone and Mary Livermore, becoming one of the movement’s most effective orators. Her speeches combined poetic eloquence with logical arguments, making her enormously popular on the lecture circuit.
Widowhood and Independence
When Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe died in 1876, Julia was fifty-seven years old. The day after his funeral, she wrote in her diary with remarkable foresight: “Began my new life today.” These words proved prophetic. Over the remaining thirty-four years of her life, Howe embraced independence with passion and energy that belied her advancing age. She traveled extensively across the United States, giving speeches on women’s rights, peace, education, and social justice. She spoke about Armenian rights in Boston’s Faneuil Hall and women’s rights as far away as New Orleans. She befriended Oscar Wilde when few Bostonians did and even rode on her grandson’s motorcycle, demonstrating a youthful spirit of adventure. At age eighty-nine, she delivered a powerful suffrage speech at the State House in Boston, arguing that women’s education and moral capacity equaled men’s and that only prejudice prevented their full political participation.
Literary and Organizational Achievements
Throughout her life, Howe continued writing prolifically. She published travel books, poetry collections, essays, and biographies including Words for the Hour (1857), Margaret Fuller (1883), Modern Society (1880), Is Polite Society Polite? (1885), Woman’s Work in America (1891), and Woman and the Suffrage (c. 1909). Her 1899 memoir, Reminiscences, became a bestseller, offering insights into her remarkable life and the era she helped transform. Howe founded or led numerous organizations that advanced women’s causes. In 1881, she was elected president of the Association for the Advancement of Women. She helped found the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1890 and served as president of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association from 1891 to 1893. She remained president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association until her death, never wavering in her commitment to securing voting rights for women—though she would not live to see the Nineteenth Amendment ratified in 1920.
Historic Recognition and Final Years
In 1908, Julia Ward Howe received what many considered the highest recognition available to American artists: she became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honorary society established in 1904 to recognize exceptional achievement in literature, music, and art. This groundbreaking honor acknowledged her contributions to American letters and her pioneering role in opening doors for women in the arts. Julia Ward Howe died peacefully at her home in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, on October 17, 1910, at age ninety-one. She had contracted pneumonia, but her death was described as peaceful—a fitting end for someone who had advocated so passionately for peace throughout her later years. At her memorial service, approximately 4,000 people gathered to honor her memory. They sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as a tribute, as it had become customary to sing the hymn at each of her speaking engagements. She was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In Summary
Julia Ward Howe’s life spanned nearly the entire nineteenth century and witnessed America’s transformation from a nation torn by slavery and civil war to an industrial power moving toward greater democracy. Through it all, she remained a consistent voice for justice, equality, and peace. Her “Battle Hymn of the Republic” endures as one of America’s most beloved patriotic songs, yet this single achievement represents only a fraction of her contributions. She transformed personal suffering in a controlling marriage into empathy for all women trapped by unjust laws. She channeled grief over war’s carnage into advocacy for international peace. She used her literary fame to advance causes larger than herself—abolitionism, women’s suffrage, education, and social reform. At every turn, she insisted that women deserved full participation in society as equals to men, that war was not the inevitable solution to conflict, and that moral progress required the elevation of all humanity. Julia Ward Howe lived on her own terms, especially after her husband’s death freed her from his control. She showed that women could be poets and activists, mothers and reformers, that age need not diminish passion or purpose. More than a century after her death, her words still march on, reminding us that the struggle for justice, peace, and equality requires courage, eloquence, and the willingness to defy those who would silence our voices.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: Who was Julia Ward Howe?
Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) was an American poet, author, abolitionist, and women’s suffrage leader best known for writing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in 1861. She was also a social reformer who authored the original Mother’s Day Proclamation and became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1908.
Q2: When did Julia Ward Howe write the Battle Hymn of the Republic?
She wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on November 19, 1861, after visiting Union army camps near Washington, D.C., and hearing soldiers sing “John Brown’s Body.” The poem was published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862 and quickly became the Union’s semi-official anthem during the Civil War.
Q3: What was Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation?
In 1870, Howe wrote the “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World,” calling for women globally to unite for peace and oppose war. She organized the first Mothers’ Peace Day in Boston on June 2, 1872, envisioning it as a political movement for peace, quite different from today’s commercialized Mother’s Day.
Q4: Was Julia Ward Howe married?
Yes, she married Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe in 1843 when she was 24 and he was 42. The marriage was difficult—he was controlling and disapproved of her writing. They had six children together. After his death in 1876, she wrote “Began my new life today” and spent her remaining 34 years as an independent activist and writer.
Q5: What role did Julia Ward Howe play in women’s suffrage?
She was a key leader in the women’s suffrage movement, co-founding the American Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 with Lucy Stone. She founded the New England Woman Suffrage Association in 1868, served as editor of Woman’s Journal for 20 years, and remained a suffrage advocate until her death in 1910, though she didn’t live to see women gain the vote in 1920.
Q6: What other books did Julia Ward Howe write?
Beyond “The Battle Hymn,” she wrote numerous books including From the Oak to the Olive (1868), a biography of Margaret Fuller (1883), Modern Society (1880), Is Polite Society Polite? (1885), Woman’s Work in America (1891), and her bestselling memoir Reminiscences (1899). She was a prolific writer of poetry, essays, and social commentary.
Q7: What was Julia Ward Howe’s legacy?
She broke barriers as a woman poet, reformer, and activist in the 19th century. She became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, influenced the peace movement through her Mother’s Day Proclamation, advanced women’s suffrage, and created one of America’s most enduring patriotic songs. Her life demonstrated that women could be both mothers and public intellectuals, artists and activists.
