Julia Ward Howe's Legacy PDF

# Julia Ward Howe MAY 27, 1819-OCTOBER 17, 1910 ## MAKE YOUR PROTEST AGAINST TYRANNY, MEANNESS, AND INJUSTICE! **HAVE YOU EVER** heard "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"? The words to this patriotic Civil War song were written by Julia Ward Howe. She was a poet and playwright who published her wor...

# Julia Ward Howe MAY 27, 1819-OCTOBER 17, 1910 ## MAKE YOUR PROTEST AGAINST TYRANNY, MEANNESS, AND INJUSTICE! **HAVE YOU EVER** heard "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"? The words to this patriotic Civil War song were written by Julia Ward Howe. She was a poet and playwright who published her work despite her husband's disapproval. Julia was born into a wealthy New York City family. Her father was a banker, but her mother died when Julia was five years old. Her father was kind, but stern and overprotective - Julia confided in her diary that she sometimes felt imprisoned in an enchanted castle. Her father held traditional male views of femininity. As a young child, Julia once fell asleep on a carriage ride and her knees spread out on the seat. Her father scolded her, "My daughter, if you cannot sit still like a lady, we will stop at the next tailor's and have you measured for a pair of pantaloons!" Julia was a pretty and talented young woman. Her delicate features, paired with her wit and charm, attracted so much male attention that her sisters called her "Diva Julia." She longed to be out in society, going to parties, concerts, and lectures, but her father forbade it. When she published her first piece, an anonymous essay, her uncle said, "This is my little girl who knows about books, and writes an article and has it printed, but I wish that she knew more about housekeeping." At twenty-four, Julia married Samuel Gridley Howe, and they had six children. He was an abolitionist and founder of the Perkins School, a school for the blind in Massachusetts that still operates today. Yet while he championed enslaved and dis-abled people, he had no sympathy for women. In the home, Samuel Howe was a dictator. He tried to stop Julia from writing, and he belittled and embarrassed her in public. The marriage was rocky, and the couple spent a lot of time apart. Julia poured out her anguish in *Passion-Flowers*, her first book of poems, which she published anonymously. > Among the shining I have shone, > Among the blessing, have been blest, > Then wearying years have held me bound > Where darkness deadness gives, not rest. Julia was fifty years old when she joined the suffrage fight. Her husband tried to stop her, but she was determined to have her way. She regretted she came so late to the cause. "Oh!" she said, "had I earlier known the power, the nobility, the intelligence which lie within the range of true womanhood, I had surely lived more wisely and to better purpose." Female writers like Julia suffered the string of male disapproval. They often wrote anonymously or under a pen name. Louisa May Alcott wrote twenty-nine **stories** as "A. M. Barnard" before she put her name on *Little Women* in 1868. In 1869, Julia joined Lucy Stone in cofounding the American Woman Suffrage Association, a splinter group that wanted to see African American men get the vote, even if women had to wait. She edited *The Woman's Journal*, the newspaper Lucy founded. She took leading roles in women's suffrage organizations in New England and a wide array of women's clubs that worked for reform causes. Julia's unhappy marriage ended with Samuel Howe's death in 1876. When they married, he had gained control of her inheritance, and, after he died, she found that through bad investments, he had lost most of it. He had left nothing in his will for her. Julia now fully understood the helplessness of being a woman without rights. In Julia's circles, many people thought suffrage was a threat to the character of a true woman. They saw suffragists traveling without male escorts, speaking in public, shouting to be heard above jeering crowds, and cornering politicians with their demands. They condemned suffragists as crude and un-Christian. Julia fought this attitude. "The weapon of Christian warfare is the ballot," she said. "Adopt it, O you women, with clean hands and a pure heart!" Julia's words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" called for justice for the enslaved. "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free," Julia wrote. In the same way, she saw the vote as the way to break free of societal slavery. "Make your protest against tyranny, meanness, and injustice!" she urged women. Julia's passion drew women of wealth and material comfort into the fight for women's suffrage. ## Celebrities today often lend their name to social concerns such as childhood hunger, literacy, or human trafficking. Their fame can bring attention and funds to these causes. In the same way, famous women brought attention to the suffrage cause. These celebrities were generally actresses or wealthy women. A freind of the Howe family once said that Julia's great importance to the suffrage fight was that "she forms a bridge between the world of society and the world of reform." Julia was just one of many celebrated women who fought for suffrage. Their family names are familiar even today - Tiffany, Astor, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Barrymore, Belmont. As managers of their homes and vast estates, these women knew how to organize. They enjoyed the limelight and knew their way around politics, business, and finance. They held fundraisers and financed suffrage conventions, parades, and offices. Their standing in society - and their money - allowed suffragists to carry their message to a wide audience.