'Like Blindness, Like Death, Like Exile': New Biography Explores the Life of Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe is likely best known for penning Battle Hymn of the Republic. Hastily written in a Washington, DC hotel room during the early days of the Civil War, Howe’s patriotic lyrics became synonymous with the march of American soldiers. “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,” Howe wrote, forever marrying religious martyrdom with the just cause of the war. Battle Hymn of the Republic was so successful that when Howe died in 1910, she was a revered matron known as the “Queen of America.”