Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-02-21
Copyright, 1912. BY Willis J. Abbott

In time of national storm and stress,
in a day of the roaring of cannon and
cries of brothers clutched in the strife of
civil war, the inspiration came to Jul1a
Ward Howe to write noble hymn which
ought to be a national anthem, but for
some reason is not. A million men in
war and in peace have sung the dog
gerel of Marching Through Georgia to
handful who can recall the sonorous
symphony of the Battle Hymn Of the
Republic" Yet the latter was written
to a we'll known popular air. and there
is a reverberating resonance in such
stanzas as:
Mine eyes have seen the glory Of the coming OF
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes
He hath Ioosed the fateful lightning of His
terrible swift sword,
His truth Is marching on.
1t was in the very earliest days of the
war that this poetic inspiration came to
Mrs. Howe. She was in Washington In
1861 and, after the fashion Of holiday
makers Of the time, went out to see
review of the federal troops. sudden
rumor that the enemy was approaching
ended the review untimely, and Mrs
Howe and her party were escorted back
to the capital by small detachment. On
the way the soldiers sang John Browns
Body" and James Freeman Clarke, who
was with Mrs. Howe, seeing her much
moved by the singing, said to her:
You ought to write some new words
to that tune"
Conceived Hymn in Sleep.
81 will" she responded fervently, and
that night retired. thinking of the task
she had set herself. She awoke in the
T.
subconscious workings of the brain in
slumber the words Of her hymn had fitted
themselves to the air and she had but
to set them down. The song won in
Simultaneous appreciation. 1t was sung
by churches, by choral societies, by
weary soldiers about camp fires and by
starving captives in Libby prison and at
Andersonville. Until the day of her
death the author never appeared in pub
lie without being asked to read 1t, for it
| was emphatically the grand achievement
| Of her life: By some one it was called
1.-The Marseillaise of the Unconditional
Americans" And yet it never quite won
| the place it's poetry deserved. Men went
into battle singing of John Browns
phrases Of the ambitious Battle Hymn
| Of the Republic were forgotten.
The woman who thus almost reached
the highest pinnacle Of achievement
| for to write the songs of people has
been held greater than to make their
| laws-was born to the purple. if the
United States at that day furnished a
parallel to that imperial color. Her
father. Samuel Ward. was one of New
birthplace va: Bowling Green. the lit
| tie oval at the foot of Broadway. now
faced by the granite custom house, but
then the site of the city's most luxurious
residences.
Her family was allied with the Astors.
Her sister became the wife of Thomas
Crawford. famous sculptor. and the
| mother of If. Marion Crawford. the more
famous novelist. One brother. Sam"
Ward. became famous as a wit and an
epicure. whose name is handed down to
pOsterity as the distinguishing title of a
cocktail and a sauce.
In 1Si3 she married DR.. S. G. Howe, a
phllanthropist. whose untiring endeavOrs
In perfectlng measures for the education
| of the deaf and dumb gave him interna-
tional fame. He opened the doorways of
the mind of Laura Bridgman, a blind.
deaf and dumb girl. an earlier example
of the Helen Keller of our own day.
Factor in Intellectual Circles.
DIR. HOwe's home in Boston was the re-
| sort Of the members of the most thor
oughly intellectual circle the United States
| mas ever known. II was a day when
every Bostonian had an ''ism." Bronson
Alcott and Margaret Fuller were preach
ing characterization SO that they only
| could understand it. George Ripley was
| experimenting with FOurierism at Brook
| Farm with fine results in the cultivation
| of minds. but niggardly returns from the
| cultivation of the fields his disciples were
| supposed to till. AS Mrs. Howe. suddenly
introduced to this society. wrote, Il was
now to make the acquaintance Of the
| Boston of the teachers. of the reformers.
| of the cranks. and also of the apostles"
In the society that gathered about her
hearth only the dullest mind could fail
| to find interest and profit. The list OF
her guests sounds like a directory OF
New England authors. when l think
| of It," she writes. IT believe that
| had q salon once upon time. / did
| no call 1t so. nor even think Of it as
| such; yet within it were gathered people
| who represented many and various as
poets of life. They were real people.
not lay figures distinguished by names
| and Clothes"
With the possible exception of her
| Battle Hymn" Mrs Howe's writings
| were wholly fugitive. Two plays came
from her pen-one written for the elder
Sothern was produced, but quickly en-
tOmbed: the other, q classic drama in