# The Story of the Battle Hymn of the Republic/Chapter 1

THE "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "the crimson flower of battle," bloomed in a single night. It sprang from the very soil of the conflict, in the midst of the Civil War. Yet the plant which produced it was of slow growth, with roots reaching far back into the past.
In order to understand how this song of our ​nation sprang into sudden being we must study that stormy past—the prelude of the Civil War. How greatly it affected my mother we shall see from her own record, as well as from the story of the events that touched her so nearly. My own memory of them dates back to childhood's days. Yet they moved and stirred my soul as few things have done in a long life.
Therefore I have striven to give to the present generation some idea of the fervor and ferment, the exaltation of spirit, that prevailed at that epoch among the soldiers of a great cause, especially as I saw it in our household.
So many years have elapsed since the evil monster of slavery was done to death that we sometimes forget its awful power in the middle of the last century. The fathers of the Republic believed that it would soon perish. They forbade its entrance into the Territories and were careful to make no mention of it in the Constitution.
The invention of the cotton-gin changed the whole situation. It was found that slave labor could be used with profit in the cultivation of the cotton crop. But slave labor with its wasteful ​methods exhausted the soil. Slavery could only be made profitable by constantly increasing its area. Hence, the Southern leaders departed from the policy of the fathers of the Republic. Instead of allowing slavery to die out, they determined to make it perpetual. Instead of keeping it within the limits prescribed by the ancient law of the land, they resolved to extend it.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 gave the first extension of slavery, opening the great Territory of Missouri to the embrace of the serpent. The fugitive-slave law was signed in 1850. Before this time the return of runaway negroes had been an uncertain obligation. The new law took away from State magistrates the decision in cases of this sort and gave it to United States Commissioners. It imposed penalties on rescues and denied a jury trial to black men arrested as fugitives, thus greatly endangering the liberties of free negroes. The Dred Scott decision (see page 10), denying that negroes could be citizens, was made in 1854. In 1856 the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas and Nebraska law. Ad​ditional territory was thrown open to the sinister institution which now threatened to become like the great Midgard snake, holding our country in its suffocating embrace, as that creature of fable surrounded the earth. It was necessary to fling off the deadly coils of slavery if we were to endure as a free nation.
The first step was to arouse the sleeping conscience of the people. For the South was not alone in wishing there should be no interference with their "peculiar institution." The North was long supine and dreaded any new movement that might interfere with trade and national prosperity. I can well remember my father's pointing this out to his children, and inveighing against the selfishness of the merchants as a class. Alas! it was a Northern man, Stephen A. Douglas, who was the father of the Kansas and Nebraska bill.
"The trumpet note of Garrison" had sounded, some years before this time, the first note of anti-slavery protest. But the Garrisonian abolitionists did not seek to carry the question into politics. Indeed, they held it to be wrong to vote under the Federal Constitution, "A league with death and a covenant with hell," as they called it. Whit​tier, the Quaker poet, took a more practical view than his fellow-abolitionists and advocated the use of the ballot-box.
When the encroachments of the slave power began to threaten seriously free institutions throughout the country, thinking men at the North saw that the time for political action had come. There were several early organizations which preceded the formation of the Republican party—the Liberty party, Conscience Whigs, Free-soilers, as they were called. My father belonged to the two latter, and I can well remember that my elder sister and I were nicknamed at school, "Little Free-Dirters."
The election of Charles Sumner to the United States Senate was an important victory for the anti-slavery men. Dr. Howe, as his most intimate friend, worked hard to secure it. Yet we see by my father's letters that he groaned in spirit at the necessity of the political dickering which he hated.
Women in those days neither spoke in public nor took part in political affairs. But it may be guessed that my mother was deeply interested in all that was going on in the world of affairs, and under her own roof, too, for our house at South ​Boston became one of the centers of activity of the anti-slavery agitation.
My father (who was some seventeen years older than his wife) well understood the power of the press. He had employed it to good effect in his work for the blind, the insane, and others. Hence he became actively interested in the management of the Commonwealth, an anti-slavery newspaper, and with my mother's help edited it for an entire winter. They began work together every morning, he preparing the political articles, and she the literary ones. Burning words were sent forth from the quiet precincts of "Green Peace." My mother had thus named the homestead, lying in its lovely garden, when she came there early in her married life. Little did she then dream that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise would disturb its serene repose some ten years later.
The agitation had not yet become so strong as greatly to affect the children of the household. We played about the garden as usual and knew little of the Commonwealth undertaking, save as it brought some delightful juveniles to the editorial sanctum. The little Howes highly approved of this by-product of journalism!
Our mother's pen had been used before this time ​to help the cause of the slave. As early as 1848 she contributed a poem to The Liberty Bell, an annual edited by Mrs. Maria Norton Chapman and sold at the anti-slavery bazars. "In my first published volume, Passion Flowers, appeared some lines 'On the Death of the Slave Lewis,' which were wrung from my indignant heart by a story—alas! too common in those days—of murderous outrage committed by a master against his human chattel" (Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Struggle, Julia Ward Howe).
Another method of arousing the conscience of the nation was through the public platform. My father and his friends were anxious to present the great question in a perfectly fair way. So a series of lectures was given in Tremont Temple, where the speakers were alternately the most prominent advocates of slavery at the South and its most strenuous opponents at the North. Senator Toombs, of Georgia, and General Houston, of Texas, were among the former.
It was, probably, at this lecture course that my father exercised his office as chairman in an unusual way. In those days it was the custom to open the meeting with prayer, and some of the contemporary clergymen were very long-winded. ​Dr. Howe informed each reverend gentleman beforehand that at the end of five minutes he should pull the latter's coat-tail. The divines were in such dread of this gentle admonition that they invariably wound up the prayer within the allotted time.
At this time no criticism of the "peculiar institution" was allowed at the South. Northerners traveling there were often asked for their opinion of it, but any unfavorable comment evoked displeasure. Indeed, a friend of ours, a Northern woman teaching in Louisiana, was called to book because in his presence she spoke of one of the slaves as a "man." A negro, she was informed, was not a man, and must never be so called. "Boy" was the proper term to use. This was a logical inference from Judge Taney's famous Dred Scott decision—viz., that "such persons," i. e., negroes, "were not included among the people" in the words of the Declaration of Independence, and could not in any respect be considered as citizens. Yet, to quote Abraham Lincoln again, "Judge Curtis, in his dissenting opinion, shows that in five of the then thirteen States—to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina—free negroes were voters, and in ​proportion to their numbers had the same part in making the Constitution that the white people had."
Events now began to move with ever-increasing rapidity. The scenes of the stirring prelude to the Civil War grew ever more stormy. Men became more and more wrought up as the relentless purpose of the Southern leaders was gradually revealed. The deadly serpent of slavery became a hydra-headed monster, striking north, east, and west. The hunting of fugitive slaves took on a sinister activity in the Northern "border" States; at the national capital the attempts to muzzle free speech culminated in the striking down of Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber itself; in Kansas the "border ruffians" strove to inaugurate a reign of terror, and succeeded in bringing on a local conflict which was the true opening of the Civil War.
The men who combated the dragon of slavery—the Siegfrieds of that day—fought him in all these directions. In Boston Dr. Howe was among the first to organize resistance to the rendition of fugitive slaves. An escaped negro was kidnapped there in 1846. This was four years before the passage by Congress of the fugitive-slave law made ​it the duty (!) of the Free States to return runaway negroes to slavery. My father called a meeting of protest at Faneuil Hall. He was the chief speaker and "every sentence was a sword-thrust" (T. W. Higginson's account). I give a brief extract from his address:
"The peculiar institution which has so long been brooding over the country like an incubus has at length spread abroad its murky wings and has covered us with its benumbing shadow. It has silenced the pulpit, it has muffled the press; its influence is everywhere. . . . Court Street can find no way of escape for the poor slave. State Street, that drank the blood of the martyrs of liberty—State Street is deaf to the cry of the oppressed slave; the port of Boston that has been shut up by a tyrant king as the dangerous haunt of free-men—the port of Boston has been opened to the slave-trader; for God's sake, Mr. Chairman, let us keep Faneuil Hall free!"
Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker also spoke. John Quincy Adams presided at the meeting.
The meeting resulted in the formation of a vigilance committee of forty, with my father as chairman. This continued its work until the ​hunting of fugitives ceased in Boston. Secrecy necessarily characterized its proceedings. An undated note from Dr. Howe to Theodore Parker gives us a hint of them:
Dear T. P.—Write me a note by bearer. Tell him merely whether I am wanted to-night; if I am he will act accordingly about bringing my wagon.
I could bring any one here and keep him secret a week and no person except Mrs. H. and myself would know it.
Yours,
Chev.
This letter raises an interesting question. Were fugitives concealed, unknown to us children, in our house? It is quite possible, for both our parents could keep a secret. I remember a young white girl who was so hidden from her drunken father until other arrangements could be made for her. I remember also a negro girl, hardly more than a child, who was secreted beneath the roof of Green Peace. Her mistress had brought her to Boston as a servant. Since she was not a runaway, the provisions of the odious fugitive-slave ​law did not apply to her. Here at least we could cry:
My father applied to the courts and in due process of time Martha was declared free—so long as she remained on Northern soil. It may be guessed that she did not care to return to the South!
The feeling of the community was strongly opposed to taking part in slave-hunts. Yankee ingenuity often found a way to escape this odious task, and yet keep within the letter of the law.
A certain United States marshal thus explained his proceedings:
"Why, I never have any trouble about runaway slaves. If I hear that one has come to Boston I just go up to Nigger Hill [a part of Joy Street] and say to them, 'Do you know of any runaway slaves about here?' And they never do!"
This was a somewhat unique way of giving notice to the friends of the fugitive that the officers of the law were after him.
If he could only escape over the border into free Canada he was safe. According to the English law no slave could remain such on British soil. ​The moment he "shook the Lion's paw" he became free. Our law in these United States is founded on the English Common Law. Alas! the pro-slavery party succeeded in overthrowing it. No wonder that Senator Toombs, of Georgia, boasted that he would call the roll of his slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument. The fugitive-slave law gave him the power to do this, and thus make our boasted freedom of the soil only an empty mockery.
The vigilance committee did its work well, and for some time no runaway slaves were captured in Boston. One poor wretch was finally caught. My mother thus describes the event:
"At last a colored fugitive, Anthony Burns by name, was captured and held subject to the demands of his owner. The day of his rendition was a memorable one in Boston. The courthouse was surrounded by chains and guarded with cannon. The streets were thronged with angry faces. Emblems of mourning hung from several business and newspaper offices. With a show of military force the fugitive was marched through the streets. No rescue was attempted at this time, although one had been planned for an earlier date. The ordinance was executed; Burns was ​delivered to his master. But the act once consummated in broad daylight could never be repeated" (from Julia Ward Howe's Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Struggle).
So great was the public indignation against the judge who had allowed himself to be the instrument of the Federal Government in the return of Burns to slavery that he was removed from office. Shortly afterward he left Boston and went to live in Washington.
The attempts to enforce the fugitive-slave law at the East failed, as they were bound to fail. The efforts to muzzle free speech at the national capital were more successful for a time.
The task of Charles Sumner in upholding the principles of freedom in the United States Senate was colossal. For long he stood almost alone, "A voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the paths of the Lord." Fortunately he was endowed by nature with a commanding figure and presence and a wonderful voice that fitted him perfectly for his great task. My mother thus described him:
"He was majestic in person, habitually reserved and rather distant in manner, but sometimes unbent to a smile in which the real geniality of his soul seemed to shed itself abroad. His voice was ​ringing and melodious, his gestures somewhat constrained, his whole manner, like his matter, weighty and full of dignity."
As an old and intimate friend, my father sometimes urged him to greater haste in his task of combating slavery at the national capital. Thus Charles Sumner writes to him from Washington, February 1, 1854:
Dear Howe—Do not be impatient with me. I am doing all that I can. This great wickedness disturbs my sleep, my rest, my appetite. Much is to be done, of which the world knows nothing, in rallying an opposition. It has been said by others, that but for Chase and Sumner this Bill would have been rushed through at once, even without debate. Douglas himself told me that our opposition was the only sincere opposition he had to encounter. But this is not true. There are others here who are in earnest.
My longing is to rally the country against the Bill and I desire to let others come forward and broaden our front.
Our Legislature ought to speak unanimously. Our people should revive the old report and resolutions of 1820.
At present our first wish is delay, that the country may be aroused.
"Would that night or Blücher had come!"
God bless you always!
C. S.
"Charles Sumner looked up and, seeing me in the gallery, greeted me with a smile of recognition. I shall never forget the beauty of that smile. It seemed to me to illuminate the whole precinct with a silvery radiance. There was in it all the innocence of his sweet and noble nature."
"At Willard's Hotel I observed at a table near our own a typical Southerner of that time, handsome, but with a reckless and defiant expression of countenance which struck me unpleasantly. This was Preston Brooks, of South Carolina."
During one of his visits to the Howes, Sumner said:
"I shall soon deliver a speech in the Senate which will occasion a good deal of excitement. It will not surprise me if people leave their seats and show signs of unusual disturbance."
My mother comments thus:
​"At the moment I did not give much heed to his words, but they came back to me, not much later, with the force of prophecy. For Mr. Sumner did make this speech, and though at the moment nothing was done against him, the would-be assassin only waited for a more convenient season to spring upon his victim and to maim him for life. Choosing a moment when Mr. Sumner's immediate friends were not in the Senate Chamber, Brooks of South Carolina, armed with a cane of india-rubber, attacked him in the rear, knocking him from his seat with one blow, and beating him about the head until he lay bleeding and senseless upon the floor. Although the partisans of the South openly applauded this deed, its cowardly brutality was really repudiated by all who had any sense of honor, without geographical distinction. The blow, fatal to Sumner's health, was still more fatal to the cause it was meant to serve, and even to the man who dealt it. Within one year his murderous hand was paralyzed in death, and Sumner, after hanging long between life and death, stood once more erect, with the aureole of martyrdom on his brow, and with the dear-bought glory of his scars a more potent witness for the truth than ever. His place ​in the Senate remained for a time eloquently empty."
Hon. Miles Taylor, of Louisiana, defended in the Senate the attack on Sumner. A part of his speech makes curious reading:
"If this new dogma" (the evil of slavery) "should be received by the American people with favor, it can only be when all respect for revelation . . . has been utterly swept away by such a flood of irreligion and foul philosophy as never before set in."
* ↑ Abraham Lincoln said of this law: "I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as a violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence and is being executed in violence" (letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 24, 1855).
* ↑ From The Journals and Letters of Samuel Gridley Howe. Dana, Estes & Co.
* ↑ "Chev" was the abbreviation of Chevalier, a title bestowed on him for his services in the Greek Revolution. He was called "Chev" by certain intimate friends.
* ↑ The Kansas and Nebraska bill.
* ↑ Protesting against the Missouri Compromise.
* ↑ From Reminiscences by Julia Ward Howe. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
* ↑ Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Struggle. By Julia Ward Howe.
* ↑ Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Struggle. By Julia Ward Howe.