Howe, Julia Ward

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

Julia Ward (1819-), an American writer and speaker. She was born in New York . In 1843 she married Dr. S. G. Howe of Boston. She joined her husband in editing the Boston Commonwealth, at that time the leading anti-slavery paper. While on a visit at Washington during the Civil War, she wrote a poem well known as the Battle Hymn of the Republic. After the close of the war Mrs. Howe engaged in the agitation for woman suffrage and prison reform. Mrs. Howe made many contributions to the papers and magazines and published several small volumes of poems. She is known to posterity, however, as the author of the poem already mentioned. It was set to the music of John Brown's Body, and was for a time very popular with the Union soldiers. The first stanza is as follows: 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 hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on. It is said that, on the evening before this hymn was written, Mrs. Howe was so oppressed with the thought of the war, so troubled and anxious over the outcome, that she was unable to write. As she slept that night the poem took shape in her mind so clearly that on awakening she was able to write it immediately and in almost the exact form in which it was published. See Willard ; Stanton