New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1910-10-29
"REMINISCENCES OF MRS. HOWE
Incidents Which Inspired Writing Of
Battle Hymn Of the Republic. p"

To the Editor of The Tribune.
Sir: | learned of the death of that illus
trious cosmopolite-and, no less. American
Julia Ward Howe, while passing through
New York the other day, and read in The
Tribune your interesting sketch of her life
and your tribute to her manifold claims on
our admiration and high respect.
Having served during the Civil War as
the assistant secretary of the Sanitary
Commission, I should have liked to see IN
your facsimile of the original Ms. or her
wonderful Battle Hymn of the Reptile
reproduction not only of her callgraphy.
but, as given in her volume of reminls-
cences, of the letter heading, viz, the
words. gu. s. Sanitary Commission, Wash
ington, D. c." of the sheet on which
she wrote It ''in the dim gray light OF that
morning following day spent-like severaI
others-in watching review of the Army
of the Potomac on the Virginia side OF the
river At it's close, as she tells Us, she
and her party started the stirring strains
Of John Browns Body" its refrain being
caught up by the militant mass who had
been man9uvring and deploying before her.
That inspiring death and war song was
largely supplanted among the boys at the
front" by her own battle hymn in year
or two after she wrote it, but no one who
ever heard either sung by a whole regiment
marching toward the field can ever forget
its marvellous effect. On the occasion of
which Mrs Howe sometimes spoke 10 her
friends the refrain was doubtless sung by
the soldiers with a vigor even greater than
was their won't for they had just repulsed
"a sudden and quite unlocked for attack
of the enemy
Such were the incidents which inspired
Mrs Howe, a few hours later. to the pro-
duction of doubtless the finest lyrical out
come-so far as surviving literature shows
of any war that ever was waged. That
It should have been written on paper OF
the Sanitary Commission was owing TO
the fact that her husband was a member
of the Board of Sanitary Commissioners,
and when corresponding in it's behalf.
while so1ourning at their Washington
hotel, he naturally employed the commits
sion's official paper
1t was on the occasion of an earlier re-
view of United States troops at Upton's
Hill, in Virginia, that I first had the pleas
ure Of meeting Mrs Howe. 1t was Cen
eral McCIelan's first great review-of sew
enty thousand men, If 1 rightly remember
and the lady. with several friends, had
gone to the scene of it in a carriage. While
DR.. Howe and myself followed on horse
back. after first attending to some business
at the offices of the commission on F street
in a house which by the way, had been
successfully occupied by President Monroe
and President John Quincy Adams after
their terms as Chief Executive had ex-
pired The object of our trip to Upton
Hill. I may also remark, par parenthese.
apparently led the doctor to speak-to
which he was generally not much given
of some incidents connected with his ex-
perfence in Greece as a colleague of Lord
Byron in the assistance given by the lat
ter to the Hellenes in their struggle against
the Turks for freedom.
All I then knew of Mrs. Howe was that
she was the author of Passion Flowers
which 1 had much admired. as was natural
10 one as young as l was. But l recall
that though in those callow days | was
inclined to regard all poems embalmed in
print as ''immortal~ was when DIR. Howe
presented me more struck with his wife's
beauty than with her celebrity as poet;
and though advancing years left their i'm
press on her. as on all. each lustrum added
to her long life left up to the last beauty
of it's own alike in the rare intonations OF
her meIodious voice and on the lineaments
irradiated by the ever sympathetic, assam"
lative and responsive spirit behind them
A. J. BLOOR.
Stonington. Conn. Oct. %. 1910.