Julia Ward Howe | |
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.jpg) Howe in 1895 | |
| Born | Julia Ward (1819-05-27)May 27, 1819 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | October 17, 1910(1910-10-17) (aged 91) Portsmouth, Rhode Island, U.S. |
| Spouse | |
| Children | |
| Parents | Samuel Ward III Julia Rush Cutler |
| Relatives | Samuel Cutler Ward (brother) |
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Julia Ward Howe (/haʊ/HOW;[1] 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 an existing song, and the original 1870 pacifistMothers' Day Proclamation. She was also an advocate forabolitionism and a social activist, particularly forwomen's suffrage.
Julia Ward was born in New York City on May 27, 1819. She was the fourth of seven children. Her fatherSamuel Ward III was aWall Street stockbroker, banker, and strictCalvinistEpiscopalian. Her mother was the poetJulia Rush Cutler Ward,[2] related toFrancis Marion, the "Swamp Fox" of theAmerican 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.[3] Though social, she became well-read,[4][5] as well as scholarly. She met, because of her father's status as a successful banker,Charles Dickens,Charles Sumner, andMargaret Fuller.[4]
Her brother,Sam, married into theAstor family,[6] 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.[citation needed]
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Though raised an Episcopalian, Julia became a Unitarian by 1841.[7] In Boston, Ward metSamuel Gridley Howe, a physician and reformer who had founded thePerkins School for the Blind.[2][8] Howe had courted her, but he had shown an interest in her sister Louisa.[9] In 1843, they married despite their eighteen-year age difference.[2] She gave birth to their first child while honeymooning in Europe. She bore their last child in December 1859 at the age of forty. They had six children:Julia Romana Howe (1844–1886),Florence Marion Howe (1845–1922),Henry Marion Howe (1848–1922),Laura Elizabeth Howe (1850–1943),Maud Howe (1855–1948), and Samuel Gridley Howe Jr. (1859–1863). Howe was an aunt of novelistFrancis Marion Crawford. Ward’s marriage to Howe was troublesome for her. He did not approve of her writing and did everything he could to disrupt her creative efforts.[10]
Howe raised her children inSouth Boston, while her husband pursued his advocacy work. She hid her unhappiness with their marriage, earning the nickname "the family champagne" from her children.[11] She made frequent visits toGardiner, Maine, where she stayed at "The Yellow House," a home built originally in 1814 and later home to her daughterLaura.[12]
Howe was a vegetarian in the late 1830s but was eating meat again by 1843.[13][14] In 1852, the Howes bought a "country home" with 4.7 acres of land inPortsmouth, Rhode Island, which they called "Oak Glen."[15] They continued to maintain homes in Boston and Newport, but spent several months each year at Oak Glen.[15]
She attended lectures, studied foreign languages, and wrote plays and dramas. Prior to her marriage, Howe had published essays onGoethe,Schiller andLamartine in theNew York Review and Theological Review.[2] Her first volume of poetry,Passion-Flowers was published anonymously in 1853. The book collected personal poems and was written without the knowledge of her husband, who was then editing theFree Soil newspaperThe Commonwealth.[16] Her second anonymous collection,Words for the Hour, appeared in 1857.[2] She went on to write plays such asLeonora,The World's Own, andHippolytus. These works all contained allusions to her stultifying marriage.[2]
Unpublished during her lifetime but certainly part of her twenty-first century legacy is a fragmentary novel,The Hermaphrodite, assembled from manuscript fragments in Harvard's Houghton Library by Gary Williams and published in 2004 by the University of Nebraska Press.
She went on trips including several for missions. In 1860, she publishedA Trip to Cuba, which told of her 1859 trip. It had generated outrage fromWilliam Lloyd Garrison, an abolitionist, for its derogatory view of Black people. Howe believed it was right to free the slaves but did not believe in racial equality.[17] Several letters on High Newport society were published in theNew York Tribune in 1860, as well.[2]
Howe's being a published author troubled her husband greatly, especially due to the fact that her poems many times had to do with critiques of women's roles as wives, her own marriage, and women's place in society.[18][19] 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. Upon her husband's death in 1876, she found that through a series of bad investments, most of her money had been lost.[4]
Howe's writing and social activism were greatly shaped by her upbringing and married life. Much study has gone into her difficult marriage and how it influenced her work, both written and active.[20]
In the early 1870s, Howe was nominated by Massachusetts governorWilliam 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, theMassachusetts 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.[21]
She was inspired to write "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" after she and her husband visited Washington, D.C., and metAbraham Lincoln at theWhite House inNovember 1861. During the trip, her friendJames Freeman Clarke suggested she write new words to the song "John Brown's Body", which she did on November 19.[22] The song was set toWilliam Steffe's already existing music and Howe's version was first published in theAtlantic Monthly inFebruary 1862. It quickly became one of the most popular songs of theUnion during theAmerican Civil War.
Howe produced eleven issues of the literary magazine,Northern Lights, in 1867. That same year she wrote about her travels to Europe inFrom the Oak to the Olive. After the war, she focused her activities on the causes ofpacifism andwomen's suffrage. By 1868, Julia's husband no longer opposed her involvement in public life, so she decided to become active in reform.[2] She helped found theNew England Women's Club and theNew England Woman Suffrage Association. She served as president for nine years beginning in 1868.[23] In 1869, she became co-leader withLucy Stone of theAmerican Woman Suffrage Association. Then, in 1870, she became president of the New England Women's Club. After her husband's death in 1876, she focused more on her interests in reform. In 1877 Howe was one of the founders of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.[24] She was the founder and from 1876 to 1897 president of theAssociation of American Women, which advocated forwomen's education.[25] Unlike other suffragists at the time, Howe supported the final version of theFifteenth Amendment, which had omitted the inclusion of language originally barring discrimination against women as well as people of color.[21] Her reason for supporting this version of the Fifteenth Amendment was that "she viewed black men's suffrage as the priority."[21]
In 1872, she became the editor ofWoman's Journal, a widely-read suffragist magazine founded in 1870 by Lucy Stone andHenry B. Blackwell.[26] She contributed to it for twenty years.[2] That same year, she wrote her "Appeal to womanhood throughout the world", later known as theMother's Day Proclamation,[27] which asked women around the world to join for world peace. (SeeCategory:Pacifist feminism.) She authored it soon after she evolved into apacifist and ananti-war activist. In 1872, she asked that "Mothers' Day" be celebrated on June 2.[28][29][30][31] Her efforts were not successful, and by 1893 she was wondering if July 4 could be remade into "Mothers' Day".[28] In 1874, she edited a coeducational defense titledSex and Education.[23] She wrote a collection about the places she lived in 1880 calledModern Society. In 1883, Howe published a biography ofMargaret Fuller. Then, in 1885 she published another collection of lectures calledIs Polite Society Polite? ("Polite society" is a euphemism for the upper class.) In 1899 she published her popular memoirs,Reminiscences.[2] She continued to write until her death.
In 1881, Howe was elected president of theAssociation for the Advancement of Women. Around the same time, Howe went on a speaking tour of the Pacific coast and founded the Century Club of San Francisco. In 1890, she helped found theGeneral Federation of Women's Clubs, to reaffirm the Christian values of frugality and moderation.[2] From 1891 to 1893, she served as president for the second time of theMassachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. Until her death, she was president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association. From 1893 to 1898 she directed the General Federation of Women's Clubs, and headed the Massachusetts Federation of Women's Clubs.[2] Howe spoke at the 1893World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago reflecting on the question,What is Religion?.[32] In 1908 Julia was the first woman to be elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters, a society; its goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art.[33]
Howe died of pneumonia on October 17, 1910, at her Portsmouth home, Oak Glen at the age of 91.[34] She is buried in theMount Auburn Cemetery inCambridge, Massachusetts.[35] 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.[36]
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 sculptorCyrus Dallin. It was originally installed to the left wall of the then main hall of theBoston Museum of Fine Arts in 1913.[37]
After her death, her children collaborated on a biography,[38] published in 1916. It won thePulitzer Prize for Biography.[39]
In 1987, she was honored by theU.S. Postal Service with a 14¢Great Americans series postage stamp.[40]
Several buildings are associated with her name:
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Works and papers
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