Chapter III: Part 3

My mother was so intimately associated with the woman movement that she was called upon to repeat her war lyric before many feminine audiences. We have spoken of her interest in women’s clubs. She was also interested in the patriotic societies, being a member of the D. A. R. and of the Colonial Dames of Rhode Island. One of the Boston chapters of the former is named in honor of the Old South Meeting-house, a venerated landmark of the city. When the congregation left their old place of worship and moved to the Back Bay, it required a tremendous effort on the part of the women of Boston to raise the necessary funds and to save the historic building from destruction. Here, in December, 1906, the Old South Chapter had a meeting where there was “much good speaking.” My mother recited her “Battle Hymn” and told them something of her Revolutionary ancestors. She remembered her forebears with affectionate pride as noble men and women whose example she strove to imitate.

A long life brings its penalties as well as its pleasures. Living to the age of nearly ninety-two years, my mother survived all the friends of her youth and most, if not all, of her contemporaries. Hence she was called upon to attend many funerals, considering this a duty, in accordance with old-fashioned ideas. A temporary lameness prevented her attending the obsequies of the poet Longfellow, an early friend of her husband’s, whom she also had known well for many years. She was able, however, to testify to her friendship for the gentle poet by giving her services for the Longfellow Memorial held at the Boston Museum. Here she took part in an authors’ reading, reciting the “Battle Hymn,” as well as some verses composed in honor of the poet.

That she should be invited to do so shows a great change in public opinion since the early years of their acquaintance. In the ’forties and ’fifties it was not thought fitting that a lady should even sign her name to a poem or a novel, much less read it in public. When my mother published some verses in a volume edited by Mr. Longfellow in those early days, they appeared as anonymous. By his advice, her first book of poems, _Passion Flowers_, bore no name upon the title-page.

VIII

TRIBUTES TO “THE BATTLE HYMN”

From Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Conan Doyle, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, William Dean Howells,[33] U. S. Senator George F. Hoar,
Thomas Starr King, Ina Coolbrith, and others--The “Battle Hymn” and
the “Marseillaise”--What Rudyard Kipling said of it in “The Light
that Failed”--English reprints distributed among the soldiers of the
present war.

The appeal of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is so wide that it takes in all classes of mankind, all, at least, who love freedom.

Wherever rise the peoples,
Wherever sinks a throne,
The throbbing heart of freedom
Finds an answer in his own.

So wrote the poet Whittier of Samuel Gridley Howe, remembering his services to the Greeks, to the Poles and others. The lines are equally true of his wife, Julia Ward Howe, and of the spirit animating her war lyric. Although written in the midst of the greatest civil war that was ever fought and won, there is no word of North or South, no appeal to local pride or patriotism, no word of sectional strife or bitterness. The God to whom appeal is made is the God of freedom. The enemy to be overcome, the serpent who is to be crushed beneath the heel of the hero, is slavery.

It is amusing and yet sad to find that some literal souls have fancied that my mother intended to designate the Southerners by “the grapes of wrath.” Needless to say that the writer intended no such narrow and prosaic meaning.

The “Battle Hymn” may well be compared to the “Marseillaise.” The man is to be pitied who can hear either of them without a thrill of answering emotion. Both have the power to move their hearers profoundly, yet they are as different as the two nationalities which gave them birth. The French national hymn appeals to us by its wonderfully stirring music more than by the words. We can imagine how the latter aroused to a frenzy of feeling the men of the French Revolution, when they rose to throw off the yoke of centuries of oppression and misrule. Feudalism perished in France to the fiery music of the “Marseillaise.” Slavery died in America to the old “John Brown” tune, as slow and steadfast in movement as the Northern race who sang it.

In our war lyric we seem to hear an echo of the old cry, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” Yet we did not fully recognize its tremendous power until Kipling christened it “_The terrible Battle Hymn of the Republic_.”

In the closing scene of _The Light that Failed_[34] we are shown a group of English newspaper correspondents about to start for a war in the Soudan. They are met together for a last evening of song and merrymaking, yet one of their number “by the instinct of association began to hum the terrible Battle Hymn of the Republic. Man after man caught it up--it was a tune they knew well, till the windows shook to the clang, the Nilghai’s deep voice leading:

“‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’”

Sir A. Conan Doyle pays a similar tribute to its power in _Through the Magic Door_:

“Take the songs which they sang during the most bloody war which the Anglo-Celtic race has ever waged--the only war in which it could have been said that they were stretched to their uttermost and showed their true form ... all had a playful humor running through them. Only one exception do I know, and that is the most tremendous war song I can recall; even an outsider in time of peace can hardly read it without emotion. I mean, of course, Julia Ward Howe’s war song of the Republic, with the choral opening line,

‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’

If that were ever sung upon a battle-field the effect must have been terrific.”

During the present war in Europe, an English lady has had a large number of copies of the “Hymn” printed and distributed, through the Young Men’s Christian Association, to the soldiers. They contain the following explanation: “This magnificent ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ was written in 1861 by a famous American lady, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, for the Army of the Northern States of America, which were then engaged in a ‘Holy War’ to rid the South of slavery and to preserve the Union of the States. It is said to have done more to awaken the spirit of patriotism and to have inspired more deeds of heroism than any other event of the American Civil War.”

It is pleasant and heartening to read these tributes of praise from distinguished Englishmen. That our “Battle Hymn of the Republic” should so strongly appeal to them shows us the essential unity of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, even though oceans roll between Great Britain and America.

The strange glory that came over the face of Abraham Lincoln and the tears he shed on hearing the “Battle Hymn” will always be, for his countrymen, the most precious tribute to its power.

“The chaplain afterward stated that in his conversation with Mr. Lincoln at his reception, the President said to him, ‘Take it all in all, the song and the singing, that was the best I ever heard.’”[35]

To the steadfast and courageous soul of another great American, who also has held the high office of President of these United States, Theodore Roosevelt, this war hymn strongly appealed. His book, _Fear God and Take Your Own Part_, is prefaced by “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and by the following dedication:

“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 was in the highest sense a good wife and a good mother, and therefore she fulfilled the primary law of our being. She brought up with devoted care and wisdom her sons and her daughters. At the same time she fulfilled her full duty to the commonwealth from the public standpoint. She preached righteousness and she practised righteousness. She sought the peace that comes as the handmaiden of well-doing. She preached that stern and lofty courage of soul which shrinks neither from war nor from any other form of suffering and hardship and danger if it is only thereby that justice can be served. She embodied that trait more essential than any other in the make-up of the men and women of this Republic--the valor of righteousness.”

In the letter given below, Hon. George F. Hoar, United States Senator from Massachusetts, compares “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” with the “Marseillaise” and with the “British National Anthem.”

WORCESTER, MASS., _May 22, 1903_.

I was thinking, just as I got your letter asking me to send a
greeting to your meeting and to Mrs. Howe, of the great power, in
framing the character of nations, of their National Anthems. Fletcher
of Saltoun said, as every child knows, “Let me make the songs of a
people, and I care not who make their laws.” No single influence has
had so much to do with shaping the destiny of a nation, as nothing
more surely expresses national character, than what is known as the
National Anthem. France adopted for hers the “Marseillaise.” Its
stirring appeal

Sons of France, awake to glory!

led the youth of France to march through Europe, subduing kingdoms
and overthrowing dynasties, till “forty centuries looked down on them
from the pyramids.” At last the ambition of France perished and came
to grief, as every unholy ambition is destined to perish and come to
grief, and her great Emperor died in exile at St. Helena.

Is there anything more cheap and vulgar than the National Anthem of
our English brethren, “God Save the King”?

O Lord our God, arise!
Scatter his enemies
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks;
On him our hopes we fix;
God save us all!

England, I hope, knows better now. But she has acted on that motto
for a thousand years.

New England’s Anthem,

The breaking waves dashed high,

one of the noblest poems in all literature, was written by a woman.

We waited eighty years for our American National Anthem. At last God
inspired an illustrious and noble woman to utter in undying verse
the thought which we hope is forever to animate the soldier of the
Republic.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom which transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on!

Julia Ward Howe cannot yet vote in America. But her words will be an
inspiration to the youth of America on many a hard-fought field for
liberty many a century after her successors will vote.

I am faithfully yours,
GEORGE F. HOAR.

MISS ALICE STONE BLACKWELL.

In the journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson we find this tribute to his friend, Julia Ward Howe:

“I honour the author of the ‘Battle Hymn’ and of ‘The Flag.’ She was born in the city of New York. I could well wish she were a native of Massachusetts. We have had no such poetess in New England.”

The little bit of State pride voiced in the regret that my mother was not a native of the old Bay State, surprises us in a man of such wide sympathies as Mr. Emerson. In Whittier’s early poems also the local feeling is strongly pronounced. We should remember, however, that during the nineteenth century a good deal of sectional feeling still existed in the different States. The twentieth century finds us more closely united as a people than we have ever been before.

Edmund Clarence Stedman happily characterizes the war hymn in the following passage. It occurs in a letter to me, asking that my mother would copy it for him.

“I can well understand what a Frankenstein’s monster such a creation grows to be--such a poem as the ‘Battle Hymn’ when it has become the sacred scroll of millions, each one of whom would fain obtain a copy of it.”[36]

Those who have visited the White Mountains will remember that one of the peaks is called “Starr King.” It was named for Thomas Starr King, a noted Unitarian preacher in the middle of the nineteenth century. Shortly before the Civil War he accepted a call to San Francisco. In addition to officiating in the church there he soon took upon his shoulders a task that was too heavy for his somewhat frail physique. This was nothing less than persuading the people of California to remain loyal to the Union. There was a good deal of secession sentiment on the Pacific coast in 1861. Starr King and his fellow-Unionists succeeded in their undertaking, but he paid the penalty of overwork with his life. Hence his memory is beloved and revered on the shores of the Pacific as well as on those of the Atlantic. One can imagine what the “Battle Hymn” must have meant to him, weary as he was with his strenuous labors. He pronounced it “a miraculously perfect poem.”

Another “Spray of Western Pine” was contributed to the garland of praise by Ina Coolbrith, one of the last survivors of the golden age of California literature.

JULIA WARD HOWE

When with the awful lightning of His glance,
Jehovah, thro’ the mighty walls of sea
His people led from their long bondage free,--
A Woman’s hand, too light to lift the lance,
Miriam, the Prophetess, with song and dance,
With timbrel, and with harp and psaltery,
Struck the proud notes of triumphs yet to be,
And voiced her Israel’s deliverance.

So in our own dear Land, in strife to save
Another race oppressed, when light grew dim,
And the Red Sea of blood loomed fatefully
To overwhelm, the God of freedom gave
Thro’ Woman’s lips His sacred battle hymn
That rang thro’ combat on to victory!

When memorial services were held in honor of my mother, Boston’s great Symphony Hall was crowded to its utmost capacity. Many were the beautiful tributes to her given by men and women of national reputation. None, however, equaled in heartfelt eloquence the speech of Lewis, the distinguished negro lawyer. As he poured out the gratitude of his race to the woman who had written “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” I suddenly realized for the first time what the words meant to the colored people.

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.

“To make us, black men and black women, free!” The appeal was to the white men of our country, bidding them share the freedom they so dearly prized with the despised slave. And this triumphant gospel of liberty with its stirring chorus of “Glory, glory, hallelujah” was sung wherever the Northern army went. It was the first proclamation of emancipation. If it moves us, how must it have affected the people to whom it was a prophecy of the longed-for deliverance from bondage.

IX

MRS. HOWE’S LESSER POEMS OF THE CIVIL WAR

Her poetic tribute to Frederick Douglass--“Left Behind,” “Our
Orders,” “April 19”--“The Flag” followed the second battle of Bull
Run--“The Secesh” in the Newport churches--“The First Martyr,” “Our
Country,” “Harvard Student’s Song,” “Return”--How “Our Country” lost
its musical setting--“The Parricide” written on the day of Lincoln’s
funeral to express her reverence.

My mother’s natural mode of expressing herself was by poetry rather than by prose. She wrote verses from her earliest years up to the time of her death. It is true that some of her best work took the form of prose in her essays, lectures, and speeches,[37] yet whenever her feelings were deeply moved she turned to verse as the fittest vehicle for her use.

We have seen that she began to write poems protesting against human slavery at an early period of her career. Thus her first published “On the Death of the Slave Lewis.” In _Words for the Hour_ we find several poems dealing with slavery, the struggle in Kansas, the attack on Sumner, and kindred subjects. The titles of these and some quotations from them are given in Chapter I. The verses on “Tremont Temple” contain tributes to Sumner and Frederick Douglass, the negro orator. The first two are as follows: volume, _Passion Flowers_ (1853), contained verses

Two figures fill this temple to my sight,
Whoe’er shall speak, their forms behind him stand;
One has the beauty of our Northern blood,
And wields Jove’s thunder in his lifted hand.

The other wears the solemn hue of Night
Drawn darker in the blazonry of pain,
Blotting the gaslight’s mimic day, he slings
A dangerous weapon, too, a broken chain.

When the Civil War broke out, she poured forth the feelings that so deeply moved her in a number of poems. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” is the best known of these, as it deserves to be. The others, however, while varying as to merit, show the same patriotism, indignation against wrong, and elevation of spirit. The woman’s tenderness of heart breathes through them, too, as in the story of the dying soldier:

LEFT BEHIND

The foe is retreating, the field is clear;
My thoughts fly like lightning, my steps stay here;
I’m bleeding to faintness, no help is near:
What, ho! comrades; what, ho!

The battle was deadly, the shots fell thick;
We leaped from our trenches, and charged them quick;
I knew not my wound till my heart grew sick:
So there, comrades; so there.

We charged the left column, that broke and fled;
Poured powder for powder, and lead for lead:
So they must surrender, what matter who’s dead?
Who cares, comrades? who cares?

My soul rises up on the wings of the slain,
A triumph thrills through me that quiets the pain:
If it were yet to do, I would do it again!
Farewell, comrades, farewell!

It will be remembered that the first blood shed in the Civil War was in Baltimore. There the Massachusetts troops, while on their way to defend the national capital, were attacked by “Plug-Uglies” and several soldiers were killed. My mother thus describes the funeral in Boston:[38]

“We were present when these bodies were received at King’s Chapel burial-ground, and could easily see how deeply the Governor was moved at the sad sight of the coffins draped with the national flag. This occasion drew from me the poem:

“OUR ORDERS

“Weave no more silks, ye Lyons Looms;
To deck our girls for gay delights!
The crimson flower of battle blooms,
And solemn marches fill the night.

“Weave but the flag whose bars to-day
Drooped heavy o’er our early dead,
And homely garments, coarse and gray,
For orphans that must earn their bread!”

(We give the first two of the six verses.)

Other verses published in _Later Lyrics_ under the title “April 19” commemorate the same event. They were evidently written in the first heat of indignation at the breaking out of the rebellion, yet her righteous wrath always gave way to a second thought, tenderer and more merciful than the first. We see this in the last verse of the “Battle Hymn” and in various other poems of hers. The opening verses of “April 19” are:

A spasm o’er my heart
Sweeps like a burning flood;
A sentence rings upon mine ears,
Avenge the guiltless blood!

Sit not in health and ease,
Nor reckon loss nor gain,
When men who bear our Country’s flag
Are set upon and slain.

Of her “Poems of the War” “The Flag” ranks second in popular esteem and has a place in many anthologies. She thus describes the circumstances under which it was composed:[39]

“Even in gay Newport there were sad reverberations of the strife. I shall never forget an afternoon on which I drove into town with my son, by this time a lad of fourteen, and found the main street lined with carriages, and the carriages filled with white-faced people, intent on I knew not what. Meeting a friend, I asked: ‘Why are these people here? What are they waiting for and why do they look as they do?’

“‘They are waiting for the mail. Don’t you know that we have had a dreadful reverse?’ Alas! this was the second battle of Bull Run. I have made some record of it in a poem entitled ‘The Flag,’ which I dare mention here because Mr. Emerson, on hearing it, said to me, ‘I like the architecture of that poem.’”

The opening verse is as follows:

There’s a flag hangs over my threshold, whose folds are more dear to
me
Than the blood that thrills in my bosom its earnest of liberty;
And dear are the stars it harbors in its sunny field of blue
As the hope of a further heaven, that lights all our dim lives
through.

Before the war, Newport had been a favorite resort for Southerners. During the summer of 1861 a number were still there, and it must be confessed some of them behaved with very little tact. According to reports current at the time, these individuals carried politics inside the church doors. When the prayer for the President of the United States was read, they arose from their knees in order to show their disapproval. At its conclusion they again knelt. Women would draw aside the voluminous skirts then in fashion, to prevent their coming in contact with the United States flag. I have always fancied that the lines in “The Flag,”

Salute the flag in its virtue, or pass on where others rule,

were inspired by this behavior of “The Secesh,” as we then called them. Some of these persons, although belonging to good society, had the bad taste to boast in our presence of how the South was going to “whip” the North. At a certain picnic among the Paradise Rocks, my mother resolved to give these people a lesson in patriotism. One of our number, a quiet, elderly lady, was selected to act as America, the queen of the occasion. She was crowned with flowers, and we all saluted her with patriotic songs.

“The First Martyr” tells the story of a visit to the wife of John Brown before the latter’s execution:

My five-years’ darling, on my knee,
Chattered and toyed and laughed with me;
“Now tell me, mother mine,” quoth she,
“Where you went i’ the afternoon.”
“Alas! my pretty little life,
I went to see a sorrowing wife,
Who will be widowed soon.”

* * * * *

Child! It is fit that thou shouldst weep;
The very babe unborn would leap
To rescue such as he.

“Our Country” contains no word about the civil strife, although it is classed with “Poems of the War” in her volume entitled _Later Lyrics_. A prize was offered for a national song while the war was in progress, and Mrs. Howe sent in this poem, Otto Dresel composing the music. Mr. Dresel was a prominent figure in the musical world of Boston for many years and wrote a number of charming songs.

The prize which had been offered for the national song was never awarded, if I remember aright, and Mr. Dresel decided to use the tune he had composed, for the “Army Hymn” of Oliver Wendell Holmes. This was “superbly sung by L. C. Campbell, assisted by the choir and band” at the opening exercises of the Great Metropolitan Fair held in New York during the Civil War, for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission.

“Our Country” thus lost its musical setting, to my mother’s regret.

OUR COUNTRY

On primal rocks she wrote her name,
Her towers were reared on holy graves,
The golden seed that bore her came
Swift-winged with prayer o’er ocean waves.

The Forest bowed his solemn crest,
And open flung his sylvan doors;
Meek Rivers led the appointed Guest
To clasp the wide-embracing shores;

Till, fold by fold, the broidered Land
To swell her virgin vestments grew,
While Sages, strong in heart and hand,
Her virtue’s fiery girdle drew.

O Exile of the wrath of Kings!
O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty!
The refuge of divinest things,
Their record must abide in thee.

First in the glories of thy front
Let the crown jewel Truth be found;
Thy right hand fling with generous wont
Love’s happy chain to furthest bound.

Let Justice with the faultless scales
Hold fast the worship of thy sons,
Thy commerce spread her shining sails
Where no dark tide of rapine runs.

So link thy ways to those of God,
So follow firm the heavenly laws,
That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed,
And storm-sped angels hail thy cause.

O Land, the measure of our prayers,
Hope of the world, in grief and wrong!
Be thine the blessing of the years,
The gift of faith, the crown of song.

The news of Lincoln’s assassination dealt a stunning blow to our people. The rejoicings over the end of the Civil War were suddenly changed to deep sorrow, indignation, and fear. How widely the conspiracy spread we did not know. It will be remembered that other officers of the Federal Government were attacked. My mother wrote that nothing since the death of her little boy[40] had given her so much personal pain. As usual, she sought relief for her feelings in verse. “The Parricide,” written on the day of Lincoln’s funeral, expresses her love and reverence for the great man, her horror of the “Fair assassin, murder--white,” whom she bids:

With thy serpent speed avoid
Each unsullied household light,
Every conscience unalloyed.

As usual, compassion followed anger. “Pardon,” written a few days later, after the death of Wilkes Booth, is the better poem of the two.

PARDON

WILKES BOOTH--APRIL 26, 1865

Pains the sharp sentence the heart in whose wrath it was uttered,
Now thou art cold;
Vengeance, the headlong, and Justice, with purpose close muttered,
Loosen their hold.

Death brings atonement; he did that whereof ye accuse him,--
Murder accurst;
But, from that crisis of crime in which Satan did lose him,
Suffered the worst.

Back to the cross, where the Saviour uplifted in dying
Bade all souls live,
Turns the reft bosom of Nature, his mother, low sighing,
Greatest, forgive!

On July 21, 1865, Harvard University held memorial exercises in honor of her sons who had given their lives for their country. The living graduates of that day numbered only twenty-four hundred, including the aged, sick, and absent. Of these more than five hundred went out to fight in behalf of the Union, many of them to return no more. Their names may be seen engraved on the marble tablets of Memorial Hall, Cambridge, a daily lesson in patriotism to the undergraduates who frequent it. Full of fun and nonsense as the latter are, they will permit no disrespect to the memory of the heroes of the Civil War. If visitors enter without removing their hats, an instant clamor arises, forcing them to do so.

On this Commencement day of 1865 a notable assemblage gathered at Harvard. In addition to other distinguished people there were present, as Governor Andrew said in his address, a “cloud of living witnesses who have come back laden with glory from the fields where their comrades fell.” Phillips Brooks made a prayer, Ralph Waldo Emerson and others spoke. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rev. Charles T. Brooks, James Russell Lowell, his brother Robert, John S. Dwight, and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe contributed poems. The verses of the latter were read by her friend, Mr. Samuel Eliot. The opening ones are as follows:

RETURN

They are coming, oh my Brothers, they are coming!
From the formless distance creeps the growing sound,
Like a rill-fed forest, in whose rapid summing,
Stream doth follow stream, till waves of joy abound.

These have languished in the shadow of the prison,
Long with hunger pains and bitter fever low;
Welcome back our lost, from living graves arisen,
From the wild despite and malice of the foe.

Another of her war poems speaks in the name of the sons of the old university. When it was published in the newspapers, a careless typesetter made some errors in setting it up. I remember how troubled she was when the line

O give them back, thou bloody breast of Treason--

was printed “beast” of Treason.

We give a single verse of the “Harvard Student’s Song”:

Remember ye how, out of boyhood leaping,
Our gallant mates stood ready for the fray,
As new-fledged eaglets rise, with sudden sweeping,
And meet unscared the dazzling front of day?
Our classic toil became inglorious leisure,
We praised the calm Horatian ode no more,
But answered back with song the martial measure,
That held its throb above the cannon’s roar.

The other “Poems of the War” published in _Later Lyrics_ are entitled “Requital,” “The Question,” “One and Many,” “Hymn for a Spring Festival,” “The Jeweller’s Shop in War-time,” and “The Battle Eucharist.”

In these we see how deeply the writer’s soul was oppressed by the sorrow of the war and the horrors of the battle-field. We see, too, how it turned ever for comfort and encouragement to the Cross and to the Lord of Hosts.

X

MRS. HOWE’S LOVE OF FREEDOM AN INHERITANCE

Stories of Gen. Francis Marion--Mrs. Howe’s kinship with the “Swamp
Fox”--The episode that saved “Marion’s Men”--The splendid sword
that rusted in its scabbard--John Ward, one of Oliver Cromwell’s
Ironsides--Samuel Ward, the only Colonial governor who refused to
enforce the Stamp Act--Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island and
champion of religious liberty.

We have seen that my mother’s love of freedom was in part the result of environment. It was also an inheritance from men who had fought for civil and religious liberty, with the sword and with the pen, on both sides of the Atlantic. Of the founder of the Ward family in America, we know that he fought for the English Commonwealth and against “Charles First, tyrant of England.” He was one of Oliver Cromwell’s Ironsides, serving as an officer in a cavalry regiment. After the republic perished and the Stuart line in the person of Charles II. returned to the throne, doughty old John Ward came to America, bringing his good sword with him. Whether it was ever used on this side of the water, the record does not say, but it was preserved in the family for nearly a century.

His descendants held positions of trust and responsibility under the State, his grandson and great-grandson being each in his turn governor of Rhode Island. The latter, Gov. Samuel Ward, has the distinction of being the only Colonial governor who refused to take the oath to enforce the Stamp Act. As the Chief Executive of “little Rhody” was chosen by the people, his views were naturally more democratic than those of governors appointed by the crown. Still, it took courage to refuse to obey the royal mandate. He early foresaw the separation from Great Britain and wrote to his son in 1766, “These Colonies are destined to an early independence, and you will live to see my words verified.” He was a member of the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775. The latter resolved itself into a committee of the whole almost every day, and Governor Ward was constantly called to the chair on such occasions, until he was seized with fatal illness, March 13, 1776, dying soon afterward.

At this time vaccination had not been discovered, the only preventive of the terrible scourge of smallpox being inoculation. Now Governor Ward could not spare time for the brief illness which this process involved. In addition to his duties in Congress he was obliged, owing to the physical disability of his colleague, Gov. Stephen Hopkins, to conduct all the official correspondence of the Rhode Island delegation, with the Government and citizens of the colony. His services were required on many committees, notably on the secret committee which contracted for arms and munitions of war. Hence, worn down by overwork, he fell an easy victim to smallpox. He died three months before his colleagues signed the Declaration of Independence. As he early saw the necessity of separation from the mother country, he would certainly have affixed his signature to it had he lived. His descendants may be pardoned for thinking that he made a great mistake in not taking the time required for inoculation.

Many of Governor Ward’s letters have been preserved. These show his ardent patriotism as well as the devout religious spirit of the men of 1776. He writes to his brother: “I have realized with regard to myself the bullet, the bayonet, and the halter; and compared with the immense object I have in view they are all less than nothing. No man living, perhaps, is more fond of his children than I am, and I am not so old as to be tired of life; and yet, as far as I can now judge, the tenderest connections and the most important private concerns are very minute objects. Heaven save my country! I was going to say is my first, my last, and almost my only prayer.”

Gov. Samuel Ward was a Seventh-Day Baptist. The little church in which he worshiped at Newport has all the charm of the best architecture of that period. It now forms part of the Historical Society’s rooms.

His son, Lieut.-Col. Samuel Ward, grandfather of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, joined the Continental Army when the Revolution broke out. Governor Ward writes of “the almost unparalleled sufferings of Samuel,” and these were indeed severe. Of the ill-fated expedition to Quebec, Colonel Ward writes: “We were thirty days in a wilderness that none but savages ever attempted to pass. We marched one hundred miles upon shore with only three days’ provisions, waded over three rapid rivers, marched through snow and ice barefoot ... moderately speaking, we have waded one hundred miles.” The result of this exposure was “the yellow jaundice.”

The Americans were overpowered by superior numbers, Colonel Ward being taken prisoner with many others. He was also at Valley Forge in that terrible winter when the American Army endured such great privations.

It is interesting to note that Colonel Ward assisted in raising a colored regiment in the spring of 1778. He commanded this in the engagement on the island of Rhode Island, near the spot where his granddaughter and her husband established their summer home a century later. From the peaceful windows of “Oak Glen” one sees, in the near foreground, the earthworks of the Revolution.

In spite of all the hardships endured during the Revolutionary War, Colonel Ward lived to be nearly seventy-six years of age. My mother well remembered her grandfather with his courtly manner and mild, but very observing, blue eyes. With the indulgence characteristic of grandparents, he permitted the Ward brothers to play cards at his house, a thing they were forbidden to do at home.

The State of Rhode Island is represented in the statue-gallery of the national Capitol by Roger Williams, pioneer of religious liberty and founder of the State, and by Gen. Nathaniel Greene, who rendered such important service during the Revolutionary War. My mother was related to both men, being a direct descendant of the former.

Whether or no Massachusetts was justified in driving out Roger Williams, we will not attempt to decide. He was evidently a person who delighted in controversy in a day when religious toleration was almost unknown.

To him belongs the honor of being the first to found a State “upon the distinctive principle of complete separation of Church and State.” Maryland followed not long after the example set by the “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

Not in Massachusetts alone did people object to his doctrines. His work, _The Bloody Tenent of Persecution_, was burned in England by the common hangman, by order of Parliament.

_George Fox Digged Out of His Burrowe_ seems a volume of formidable proportions to the modern reader. With Quaker doctrines Roger Williams had small patience, although he permitted members of the persecuted sect to live in the Colony. It seems that G. Fox did not avail himself of an offer of disputation on fourteen proposals. His opponents claimed that he “slily departed” to avoid the debate. It went on just the same, being “managed three days at Newport and one day at Providence.”

This volume, _George Fox_, etc.[41], is dedicated to Charles II. by “Your Majestyes most loyal and affectionate Orator at the Throne of Grace.”

One can guess how much attention the Merrie Monarch paid to the fourteen “proposalls”[42] and the elaboration thereof.

The best testimony to the essential gentleness and goodness of this eccentric divine is the behavior toward him of the Indians. During King Philip’s war they marched on Providence with the intention of burning it.

“The well-attested tradition is that Roger Williams, now an old man, alone and unarmed, save with his staff, went out to meet the band of approaching Indians. His efforts to stay their course were unavailing, but they allowed him to return unmolested, such was the love and veneration entertained for him by these savages.”

Of my mother’s ancestors on the maternal side, the most interesting was her great-great-uncle, Gen. Francis Marion, the partisan leader of the Revolution. She was descended from his sister Esther, “The Queen Bee of the Marion Hive,” the general himself having no children.

Many romantic stories are told of him. He was present at a drinking-party during the siege of Charleston when the host, determined that no one should leave the festivities until some particularly fine Madeira had been disposed of, locked the door and threw the key out of the window. Marion had no notion of taking part in any excesses, so he made his escape by jumping out of the window. A lame ankle was the result, and the Huguenot left the city, all officers unfit for duty being ordered to depart. Marion took refuge now with one friend, now with another, and again he was obliged to hide in the woods, while recovering from this lameness. The accident was a most fortunate one, however. If he had remained in Charleston he would have been obliged to surrender and the brigade of “Marion’s Men” might never have existed.

How he formed it in the darkest hour of the war in the South is a matter of history. How, like so many will-o’-the-wisps, they led the British a weary dance “thoro’ bush, thoro’ brier,” all through the woods and the swamps of South Carolina, is a tale that delights the heart of every school-boy.

Well knows the fair and friendly moon
The men that Marion leads,
The glitter of the rifles,
The scamper of their steeds;
’Tis life to guide the fiery barb
Across the moonlit plain:
’Tis life to feel the night-wind
That lifts the tossing mane.
A moment in the British camp,
A moment and away,
Back to the pathless forest
Before the peep of day.[43]

The best-known story tells of the British officer who was brought blindfolded into Marion’s camp and entertained at a dinner consisting solely of sweet potatoes. Small wonder that he made up his mind the Americans could not be conquered, since they were able to subsist on such scanty rations!

Reversing the text of Scripture, General Marion provided his men with swords made of saws, ammunition being scanty. He was as well known for his humanity as for his ingenuity. It is said that once, wishing to draw his sword, he found it rusted into the scabbard, so little had it been used.

When my mother, as occasionally happened in her later years, would quietly slip off on some expedition which her daughters feared was too much for her strength, we would remember her kinship with the “Swamp Fox.”

Of her parents, it should be said that both were deeply religious. Her mother, Julia Cutler Ward, a woman of very lovely character and intellectual tastes, died at the early age of twenty-seven. Her father, Samuel Ward, one of the “Merchant Princes of Wall Street,” was well known for his integrity, liberality, and public spirit. He was especially interested in the causes of temperance and religion, being “one of the foremost promoters of church-building in the then distant West.” He was also one of the founders of the New York University, and owned the first private picture-gallery in New York.

Thus we see that my mother, like so many of her fellow-Americans, came from a long line of God-fearing and patriotic men and women. In the words of the “Battle Hymn” we hear not only the voice of the Union Army, but an echo of all the aspiring thoughts and noble deeds of the builders of our great Republic.

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Abraham Lincoln said of this law: “I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as a violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence and is being executed in violence” (letter to Joshua F. Speed, August 24, 1855).

[2] From _The Journals and Letters of Samuel Gridley Howe_. Dana, Estes & Co.

[3] “Chev” was the abbreviation of Chevalier, a title bestowed on him for his services in the Greek Revolution. He was called “Chev” by certain intimate friends.

[4] The Kansas and Nebraska bill.

[5] Protesting against the Missouri Compromise.

[6] From _Reminiscences_ by Julia Ward Howe. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

[7] _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Struggle._ By Julia Ward Howe.

[8] _Ibid._

[9] Letter from Dr. S. G. Howe to Charles Sumner.

[10] _Journals and Letters of Samuel Gridley Howe._ Dana, Estes & Co.

[11] History declares that a colleague of Brooks did thus stand, to prevent any one’s coming to Sumner’s assistance. About the pistols, I am not sure.

[12] Sketch of John Albion Andrew by Eben F. Stone.

[13] _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Struggle._ By Julia Ward Howe.

[14] _Reminiscences_ by Julia Ward Howe.

[15] _Ibid._

[16] _Ibid._

[17] From _Journals and Letters of Samuel Gridley Howe_. Dana, Estes & Co.

[18] _Reminiscences._

[19] _Ibid._

[20] _Ibid._

[21] _Ibid._

[22] See Chap. ii, page 33.

[23] _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Struggle._

[24] _Reminiscences_, 1899.

[25] In the reprint of the “Battle Hymn,” made in England for the use of the soldiers during the present war, this discarded verse has, through some misunderstanding, been included.

[26] See _Julia Ward Howe_, Vol. II, Chap. xi.

[27] This account of the day in Libby Prison is compiled from the _Washington Star_ and from the _Life of Chaplain McCabe_.

[28] _Life of Chaplain McCabe._

[29] _Ibid._

[30] _Reminiscences_ by Julia Ward Howe.

[31] _Julia Ward Howe._ By Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott.

[32] _Life of Julia Ward Howe._

[33] See Chapter IX.

[34] In the later editions of the novel another scene is substituted for this.

[35] _Life of Chaplain McCabe_--“the singing chaplain.”

[36] _Julia Ward Howe._ Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

[37] Mr. Howells writes in his _Literary Boston Thirty Years Ago_: “I heard Mrs. Howe speak in public and it seemed to me that she made one of the best speeches I had ever heard.”

[38] _Reminiscences_, p. 261.

[39] _Ibid._, p. 258.

[40] Samuel Gridley Howe, Jr., who died in May, 1863, aged three and a half years.

[41] _George Fox Digged Out of His Burrowe._

[42] “Proposalls”--I here quote Roger Williams’ spelling.

[43] William Cullen Bryant’s “The Song of Marion’s Men.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.