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.
 Julia Ward Howe was the daughter of a Wall Street banker and wife of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe who ran 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 with military, horses galloping all around and innumerable campfires burning.
Julia Ward Howe wrote: “I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.
Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, ‘I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.’ So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: Glory, glory, hallelujah! I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; Glory, glory, hallelujah! I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel; Glory, glory, hallelujah! He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; Glory, glory, hallelujah! In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea; Glory, glory, hallelujah!
So profound was Julia Ward Howe’s influence, that Theodore Roosevelt dedicated his book to her, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (NY: G.H. Doran Co., 1916, p. v.): “This book is dedicated to the memory of Julia Ward Howe: because in the vital matters fundamentally affecting the life of the Republic, she was as good a citizen of the Republic as Washington and Lincoln themselves.
She preached that stern and lofty courage of soul which shrinks neither from war nor…suffering and hardship and danger… She embodies that trait more essential than any other in the make-up of the men and women of this Republic – the valor of righteousness.”
After the Civil War, slavery was ended in the United States, but recent research reveals that there is actually more slavery today than at any time in history. Slavery is called by different names, such as human-trafficking, generational indebtedness as in South Asia; forced labor in North Korean prison camps; exploited labor for mining and agriculture in South America and Africa; illicit drug production and trade; and sex-slavery in cities across the world, including the United States, of which Super Bowl weekend is unfortunately a big venue.
Slavery is part of Islamic Sharia Law, with long histories of slave markets, forced marriages and child brides.
An estimated 180 million Africans and over a million Europeans were enslaved in the 1,400 years of Islamic expansion.
In Fear God and Take Your Own Part, 1916, Theodore Roosevelt wrote his address to the American Sociological Congress: “The civilization of Europe, America and Australia exists today…only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization… stretching through the centuries from Charles Martel in the 8th century and those of John Sobieski in the 17th century…” Theodore Roosevelt continued: “During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier and the Polish king, the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from the two continents; and today nobody can find in them any ‘social values’ whatever, in the sense in which we use the words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan influences are concerned…”
Theodore Roosevelt concluded: “There are such ‘social values’ today in Europe, America and Australia only because…the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do – that is, to beat back the Moslem invader. If Europe…had not been able to defend itself…there would have been no ‘social values’…and no sociologists to discuss them.” For God’s Glory Alone Ministries thanks Bill Federer and www.AmericanMinute.com
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She was in the highest sense a good wife and a good mother… At the same time she fulfilled her full duty to the commonwealth…
