Julia Ward Howe (27 May 1819-17 October 1910), reformer and author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," was born in New York City to a comfortable banking family and was educated privately. In 1843 she married Samuel Gridley Howe, her senior by some twenty years, and head of the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. Maternal duties were coupled with marital problems, and the witty, scholarly Mrs. Howe sought selfexpression and release from personal tension in verse and plays. Her first work, Passion-Flowers (1854), was published anonymously, to be followed by Words for the Hour and A Trip to Cuba. It was not until December 1861, when she wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," that she captured the public imagination. Various versions of its composition exist. According to one, Mrs. Howe, having watched a review of the Army of the Potomac, returned to Washington with a party of Bostonians who...