Free Republic

Five dollars was all she was paid by the Atlantic Monthly Magazine for her poem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," published FEBRUARY 1, 1862. It became Lincoln's favorite song and the Union's theme song. Her name was Julia Ward Howe, the daughter of a Wall Street banker and the wife of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, director of a school for the blind in Boston, which grew into the famous Perkins Institute. Julia and her husband entertained John Brown in their home and published the anti-slavery journal Commonwealth. In 1861, Julia traveled to Washington, D.C., and saw the city teeming...