Julia Ward Howe.

White Ribbon, Volume 7, Issue 78, 1 November 1901, Page 1

Julia Ward Howe.

Julia Ward Howe (the subject of our illustration) comes from a long line of Puritan ancestry. She was an ardent worker in the anti-slavery cause. In 1856-57 she and her husband, Dr Howe, edited an anti-slavery paper, The Boston Commonwealth , and were leaders with Garrison, Sumner, Phillips, Higginson, and Theodore Parker. It was Dr and Mrs Howe who brought about meetings in Boston for the discussion of the problems of the Abolitionists on one side and pro-slavery advocates on the other. Mrs Howe was born in New York on May 27th, 1819, and is therefore in her eighty-second year. She has devoted her life untiringly to everything that elevates humanity. Says Major Pond of her in his 44 Eccentricities of Genius” 44 For thirty years Mrs Howe has been lecturing in all parts of the United States, and has always shown herself the elegant, wellbred, highly-educated woman. She will be long remembered for her work for women, for literature, and in the anti-slavery cause; but she will be most loved and longest remembered for her inspiring 4 Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ which she wrote in 1861.” The story of how she came to write that hymn is interesting. During 1861 she visited Washington with some friends. One day the party drove out to a review of troops some distance

from the city. A sudden surprise on the part of the enemy interrupted the proceedings before they were well begun. A small body of the men were surrounded and cut off from their companies, reinforcements were sent to their assistance, and the expected pageant was necessarily given up. Mrs

Howe writes, 4 We turned our horses ’ heads homeward. For a long distance the foot soldiers filled the road. They were before and behind us, and we w ere obliged to drive very slowly. We began presently to sing some of the wellknown songs of the war, and among them “ John Brown’s Body Lies-a-mouldering in the Grave.” This seemed

to please the soldiers w ho crieu, 44 Good for you ! ” and they themselves took up the strain. Mr Clarke (the Rev Freeman Clarke, who was one of the party) said to me, “ You ought to write some new words to that tune.” I replied that I had often wished to do so. In spite of the excitement of the day, I went to bed and slept as usual, but awoke next morning in the grey of the early dawn and, to my astonishment, found that the wished for lines were arranging themselves in my brain. I hastily rose, saying to myself, 44 I shall lose this if I don’t write it down.” Immediately I searched lor a sheet of paper and an old stump of a pen that I had had the night before, and began to scrawl the lines almost without looking. Having completed that, I lay down again and fell asleep, but not without feeling that something of importance had happened to me.’” The following are the words Oa this historic hymn : BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is tramping 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. Refrain. Glory, glory, hallelujah; Glory, glory, hallelujah ; Glory, glory, hallelujah, His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps; They havebuilded Him an altar in the evening * dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; His day is marching on. Glory, glory, etc. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: “ As ye deal with My contemners so with you My grace shall deal; “ Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, Since God is marching on." Glory, glory, etc. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat: O be swift, my soul, to answer Him ! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. Glory, glory, etc. In the beauties of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and mo: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. Glory, glory, etc.