Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) was an American poet, abolitionist and campaigner for women’s suffrage, born in New York City. She was married to the reformer Samuel Gridley Howe, with whom she edited the antislavery paper The Commonwealth.

Her “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, written in 1861 and printed in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862, became the most famous song of the Union cause.