Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe was born in New York City on May 27, 1819, into the family of banker Samuel Ward and Julia Rush Cutler Ward. Her mother died when Julia was five, and she was educated largely by tutors and through extensive private reading. In 1843 she married Samuel Gridley Howe, the physician, educator, and abolitionist associated with the Perkins Institution for the Blind. Their marriage was difficult, in part because he resisted her literary and public ambitions, but she continued to study, write, and raise six children. Her first poetry collection, Passion-Flowers, appeared anonymously in 1854, followed by Words for the Hour in 1857.

The Howes moved within New England's antislavery circles. Julia contributed to and helped edit the Boston Commonwealth, an antislavery newspaper, and she met John Brown before the Civil War. During a November 1861 visit to Washington, she wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic” for the melody then associated with the soldiers' song about Brown. Its publication in 1862 gave her a public reputation that extended far beyond her earlier literary work.

After the war, Howe became a prominent speaker and organizer for women's suffrage and peace. She worked with Lucy Stone in the New England and American Woman Suffrage Associations, edited the Woman's Journal, and issued her 1870 peace appeal commonly called the Mother's Day Proclamation. In 1908 she became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, on October 17, 1910.