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Today in History: Julia Ward Howe
Today is the 100th anniversary of the election of Julia Ward Howe to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Howe was the first woman ever elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters when she was elected on January 28, 1908.
Howe was born in New York in 1819, and she, along with her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, supported the abolitionist movement. Howe might be best known for writing Battle Hymn of the Republic (published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862) after listening to the Union troops sing popular Army songs during the Civil War.
The Library of Congress explains:
After the war, Julia Howe worked for women’s rights, prison reform, and sex education. In 1868, she co-founded the New England Women’s Club. She also served as a leader of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). After a long life of public service, Howe died in 1910.
To find out more, you can read the Library of Congress’s Today in History on Julia Ward Howe
You can also read the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic after the fold...
BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.BY MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightings of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.Chorus--Glory, glory, hallelujah!
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 have builded 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.Chorus--Glory; glory, hallelujah, &c.
His day is marching on.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."Chorus--Glory, glory, hallelujah, &c.
Since God is marching on.He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat:
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant my feet!
Our God is marching on!Chorus--Glory, glory, hallelujah, &c.
Our God is marching on!In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.Chorus--Glory, glory, hallelujah, &c.
While God is marching on.
Lyrics from Library of Congress.
— michael | January 28, 2008 11:10 AM | I found it online
