Julia Ward Howe

Elizabeth Stanton
Julia Ward Howe
Paulina K. Davis
Digital Bibliography
Chronology

Julia Ward was born in New York in 1819. Her ancestors included two colonial Rhode Island governors. Julia was educated by governesses in a private environment permeated by property ownership, wealth and privilege. On a trip to Boston in 1841 Julia met Samuel Howe, a noted philanthropist, educator, and founder of the Perkins Institute for the Blind. The pair married in 1843. Samuel Howe supported the anti-slavery movement but was less inclined toward women's emancipation.

Some archivists contend that Samuel Howe was a member of the populace targeted by temperance reformers and that his abuse of alcohol contributed to physical abuse of Julia. Julia, in addition to giving birth to six children, wrote poetry and plays. The Boston resident occasionally recited to Lyceum audiences in and around the Boston and New York vicinity but did not travel far from home.

With the Civil War came the cessation of Lyceum activity. War became a form of macabre entertainment. Frequently townspeople would pack picnics and plan excursions to view battles on the outskirts of town. It was after one such battle in 1861 Julia Ward Howe saw the reality of the horrors of war. In a moving tribute to Union soldiers Julia composed the poem The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The soon-to-be-anthem for freedom was published in 1862. Julia received four dollars for her efforts.

Meanwhile Julia worked with the widows and orphans of soldiers on both sides of the conflict. As Julia became more famous, she was asked to speak publicly more often. Samuel Howe became less adamant that she remain a private person, and while he never actively supported her efforts, his resistance eased. Julia soon identified the parallels between the struggle for freeing slaves and the need for legal equality for women.

Julia Ward Howe helped organize the New England Suffrage Association in 1868. Within a year, it became the American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1870 she issued a call for a National Mother's Day of protest to bring peace to the world. Howe's appeal was provoked by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. The concept was not Howe's originally, having been attempted first by Anna Jarvis in 1858 as an effort to improve sanitation conditions in the United States. Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, however, strived to pull women together in a combined effort to stop war and perpetuate peace.

In it she said, "Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause...Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice...let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel."

Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a National Mother's Day of Peace but her call of a unity of reformers and suffrage proponents was soon to come to fruition. She was a popular speaker on the Chautauqua Circuit. So were the famous and almost famous across the nation. Tents, churches, halls, auditoriums, libraries, and outdoor camping facilities accommodated the assemblies. At the height of popularity Circuit Chautauqua was attended in nearly 10,000 communities.

In 1890 Julia Ward Howe's Suffrage Association merged with Elizabeth Stanton's group. Neither would live long enough to see their dreams realized. Julia Ward Howe died in 1910.