Julia Ward Howe: a Biographical Discussion with Professor Elaine Showalter

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Hello, everyone, it's me, it's Professor Buzzkill. You know, yesterday
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I introduced this concept of having a week dedicated to
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shows about Julia Ward Howe and the Battle Hymn of
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the Republic. And fortunately for all of you, we have
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on the line from Princeton Professor Elaine Showalter, the author
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of The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe, which was
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a biography of Julia Ward Howe from twenty seventeen, but
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also a sort of general discussion of the whole period
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and a lot of her work. Really, it was the
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big book at the time. Professor I remember when it
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came out and we all went nuts, because if I
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can just read one quick quote that Harold Holtzer, the
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Lincoln scholar wrote, Glory, Glory, Hallelujah at Last, a full,
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fine modern biography, modern biography of the independent woman whose
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words reanimated the Civil War. No, you can't get a
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better book board than that.
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No, I was really thrilled about. She's really a huge subject.
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And what excited me about it.
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You know, the title the Civil Wars is plural, because
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what I want to say is that she was fighting
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a political battle but also a private one, and the
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other civil war was in her marriage, and it's the
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classic story that you know, you look at it thought
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a great woman certainly in earlier centuries, and it's very
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unusual to find somebody whose husband was totally supportive. And
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he's her husband, very interesting person in his own right.
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But their partnership was started out as a partnership and
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then really declined and changed is such an.
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Important part of her story.
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She had to liberate herself while she approached the country,
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and the battle him was certainly a stage a step
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in that fight, that.
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Per private fight.
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Well, let's start with the beginning her early life and
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up to her marriage. What was her biographical background reach,
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I mean, you show very clearly in the book, and
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I don't want to give away the story because we
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want people to get the book. You know, it's an
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absolutely fascinating family life, parentage, ancestry, and then continuing on
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through her marriage.
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Well, she grew up in most extraordinarily rich family in
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New York. Her father was a multimillionaire. There were three
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daughters and three sons. Her mother died quite young, when
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she was quite young, and the father built a magnificent
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house in what is now pretty much soho and furnished
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it with everything that he could imagine would be educational
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and aspiring. But both his daughters and his sons, and
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he spared no money. He certainly spared no money educating
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the sons who went off and they went to university.
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They went to Columbia, among the first Americans to graduate
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from Columbia Universities. It was being formed. And he had
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wonderful tutors for the daughters. Naturally, daughters in the early
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nineteenth century, you're not going to go to college. They're
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not going to be educated past what we would think
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of as junior high. She was lucky in having private tutors.
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She was very good at languages, and.
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So she maintained her work with French.
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And German, but her formal education stopped young. Her informal education,
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on the other hand, was really tremendous. She had the
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run of the library in her father's home. Her brothers
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brought home their collections from Europe, and one brother and
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particularly brought back all these books in French and German.
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Many of them would be considered, you know, very risquae,
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very very much unsuitable for the eyes of a young lady.
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So she read a lot, and that was a great
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opportunity for her. On the other hand, she having the
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big brothers and growing up in that era where she
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had to be chaperoned every time she left the house.
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She understood from birth, from early childhood, what it was
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like to be inferior, like to live in a patriarchy.
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And she did have a real patriarch as a father,
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And although her brothers were incredibly supportive and wonderful and
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they were all very close, she could see that she
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was never going to have the kind of freedom and
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support in the family that they took as absolutely.
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Natural as their due.
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Do you think that that sort of led to her
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embracing the types of social reform that she embraced. For instance,
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she embraces abolitionism, the abolition of slavery.
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Well, yeah, that came a lot later.
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I mean, I think, yeah.
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And she did.
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I would not call it a liberal household.
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I think she had an instinct.
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I think as a daughter, as a woman, she had
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an intuitive identification with the underdog, with the repressed.
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But as a child she did. I mean, she was.
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Really locked up in many ways, and she jokes about
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it in her memoirs that it was true and I
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like to compare her with Walt Whitman.
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If you think about it, in order to really.
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Get what it was about someone like Julie Waird, how
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do you have to think about what her age, who
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had the same ambitions were doing. She's virtually the same
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age as Walt Whitman, and they were growing up in
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almost exactly the same time in New York City. Now,
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Whitman was growing up in Brooklyn in a very poor family.
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He went to work when he was fourteen. He went
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all over the city. You know, he was totally free.
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He could go anywhere he wanted as a teenager. He
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went to the docks, he went to the bars, he
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went to the prisons. You know, he was completely in
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touch with it all. He was in touch with his
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own sexuality. He was writing about his own sexuality. And
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he had this incredibly deep and wide and positive sense
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of America. This was not the case for her. She
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did get to go to the opera that was considered approved.
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She got to go to church every Sunday, and she
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says church is really thing about women. In church, it's
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where you wear your hat. This is where you wear
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your new hat. And it gets commented on that was
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about as far as it went, So she was not
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really exposed to the kinds of radical things that she
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would get too much later.
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And I don't know how much of it even penetrated
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that household.
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Well, that's fascinating. How then, after the Civil War starts,
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at the very beginning of the Civil War, how then
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do you think she comes to We'll get to the
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story of how she wrote the Battle him specifically, but
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what's her basic view on the Civil War and if
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you will, righteousness of the Civil War, the righteousness of
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the Union cause, and things like that. How does she
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get to those opinions?
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I think for Julia, and I can't generalize about it,
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but I think for Julia came out of personal experience.
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She was never an idy logue.
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Of course, by the time the Civil War started, she
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was a Bostonian. She grew up in New York, but
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her life was spent in Boston, and Boston was a
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stronghold of abolitionism, so she many many friends and chev himself,
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her husband was a radical abolitionist and quite a reckless one,
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and he actually got mixed up with John Brown's attempt
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you know, over so the government and so on. They
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grew up, and that was one very positive thing about
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the marriage. She grew up in the hotbed of abolitionism,
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and I think that her sense of the futility and
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waste of first of all of slavery, but secondly of
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war bleudged was intense and it came out of her
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MILLI yere, came out of her philosophical readings and so on.
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So I think she would have come to it in
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any case. And as I said, I think as a
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woman she identified with the slave as a New.
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England woman, did I mean, they got it what that
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could be like?
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Well, so many of us have heard the story of
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how she wrote The Battle of the Republic was in
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the ken Burns Civil War series. It's repeated a lot,
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but I always had to remind myself the ken Burns
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Civil War documentary series is actually quite old now, so
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I think lots of our listeners haven't heard this story.
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And it's a wonderful story about how she came to
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write The Battle him now, but I don't want to
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give it. Your version is so much better and so
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much more close to what actually happened.
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Well, when the Civil War began, Julia married a doctor.
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He was a doctor who had never really been in
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private practice. He was a very political creature, very idealistic man.
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When he graduated from medical school, instead of practicing, he
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went to Greece to fight in the Greek Revolution against
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the Turks, like Lord Byron, who.
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Was one of his great heroes.
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And he then became very much involved from the beginning
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in the Union side of the Civil Wars. Lincoln asked
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him to Washington to be the head of what they
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call the Sanitary Service, the medical services of the Union Army.
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So she knew about.
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That, and when the war started, she was really a
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kind of a bystander.
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She writes in her journals.
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She kept all these wonderful journals and corresponded with her
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sisters or two sisters, so we know a lot about
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what she was thinking, which is a great obviously a
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great wound to a biographer. And she was agonized because
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she was not a boy. We may all come with
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a lot of women during the Civil War felt that,
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you know, they thought it was terrible to have to stay.
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At home and make bandages and knit.
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Stockings, and so when they wanted to fight, they felt
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so strongly about it. So her first feelings in the
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Civil War were intense frustration. And then Shad her husband
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became the head of the military services, and she got
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to travel to Washington with him. It was on a
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big trip to Washington, which was for her, you know, tourism.
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That's really all she was allowed to do. But one
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day while he while her husband was you know, making
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talking to Lincoln and so on, she met Lincoln. Interestingly,
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like many contemporaries of Lincoln before the Civil War, had
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a very low opinion of him. It's really fascinating to
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read this. And she regarded she was a very educated Bostonian.
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She thought Lincoln was a total bumpkin and she said, well,
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what he has going for? He is honest, dabe. But
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they thought he was, you know, real backwoods character. So
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that Lincoln really, you know, of course he rose to
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the occasion. His great power and his great eloquence and
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nobility came out. But she went when she went down
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to Washington, then they first met Lincoln and then Shell
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went off into his work and she went out on
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a kind of a tour really for other Bostonians that
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were there. And they said, let's go out and see
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what's going on. And the Civil War was one of
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those battles like the Napoleonic Wars that people went to
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look at amazingly. There was going to be a big
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battle in Virginia, and they were let's let's drive down
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and take a look. So they went down and things
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were pretty quiet as they went down, and then there.
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Was a skirmish. People started fighting, and so they said, well,
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let's look. Go back to Washington.
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And she was riding back to Washington in a kind
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of open carriage. And as they were in this carriage,
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the soldiers, some of the soldiers in retreat, were going by,
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and they were singing to the tune that we all know.
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I came about John Brown, Body, the Mouldreen and It's Grave,
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which we all.
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Know the tune of the battle hymn.
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And they were all listening to it as they drove
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slowly around along back to Washington. And one of the
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people in the carriage with her, who was actually a
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minister and her friend, said to her, missus, how you
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should write better words to this tune. And it was
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very important that it was a minister and a man
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too who said this to her, because it was giving
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her permission.
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She was made to feel extremely guilty.
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About her poetry by her husband, and he had pretty
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much said to her, you were forbidden to publish because
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her first book of poems, which she published anonymously, had
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some very satirical poems about him. He had really he
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was punishing her, really, but this was it was a
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terrible moment.
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This was a clergyman who told her to do it.
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So she felt she had permission and she had a
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kind of divine race to carry it on.
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Anyway.
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She thought, I'm a titled but she didn't really know
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what she was going to say.
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It was very much in her mind, and she thought
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about it.
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All that day, and then that night she went to
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sleep in the Willard Hotel in Washington.
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I live in Washington. That's where I am now.
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And the Willard Hotel has a plaque outside about Julia Wardhowe,
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which people usually ignore. That she wouldn't sleep in the
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same room with her smallest baby.
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She did not share the room with her husband.
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But she was sleeping in the room with her baby,
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you know, give him a good night's rest. And in fact,
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they we're not sleeping together at that point. And in
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the middle of the night, she says, she suddenly woke
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up and the words were in her head, and she
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didn't want to wake up the baby, so she didn't
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turn on the lights.
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She got out of bed.
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She said she had a little piece of pencil and
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by moonlight scribbled down the words of.
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The battle hymn.
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Woke up in the morning and copied it out on
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the paper that the Willard Hotel supplied, So she's got
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the hotel paper was for the first draft, and she
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gave it. She showed it to the minister and he said,
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I think this is really good.
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They went back to Boston.
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She sent it to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly,
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and that was a kind of a bold thing for
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her to do, because you know, she had been told
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don't publish your work, but she knew.
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That this was different, this was an exception.
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And she sent it to the editor of the Atlantic
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Monthly and he said, this is perfect, this is just right.
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And he put it on the cover of the Atlantic
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Monthly in February eighteen sixty two, and it said what
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so many people felt. It was so inspiring, It was
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a really majestic poem, and it was I think, you know,
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one of her very best poems. There are a handful
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of poems that stand out, and it is certainly among
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the two or three.
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Best writing to music.
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Writing to a song was very very good for her
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because a lot of her poetry is written in a
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kind of jingly quatrain. I mean, she overused it a
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hymn meter four lines a B A B rhyme, which
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was quite limiting, I think, But when she was using
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the music, she could write a bigger line. She was,
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you know, a fuller line, and it really liberated her imagination.
285
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And so I think the lyric is very powerful, and
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the several verses, you know, and really gave her opportunities
287
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to use the full linguistic resources that she possessed. So
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it was a it was a very lucky moment for her,
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in a very lucky birth of that great poem. And
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I always say about this, it's the only poem that Americans,
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you know, by harsh.
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That's right, it comes from them, that's true.
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Yeah, that's right, that's right. It's been sung so many
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times in so many different contexts. But of course this
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00:14:46.720 --> 00:14:48.799
story has been told, the story of the writing has
296
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been told, and she was often asked at the time
297
00:14:51.960 --> 00:14:54.960
in the succeeding months after the publication, and oh, by
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the way, publishing it on the cover of The Atlantic
299
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was a really big deal.
300
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Yes, it was incredible coupe and she got well, she
301
00:15:01.919 --> 00:15:03.919
got paid for it. She she got two bucks for
302
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yet that.
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00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:09.759
But she was asked by several people in the early
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part of the war to retell the story of how
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she wrote it. And I've always thought that was fascinating.
306
00:15:16.600 --> 00:15:20.759
Well, I mean, she became such a celebrity during her lifetime,
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and it's the same thing now. You know, wherever she went,
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first of all, that's what the orchestra would play. If
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there was a choir, that's what they would sing. And
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then they wanted her to sing. She had actually a
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beautiful voice, a real operatic soprano contralto voice, and everywhere
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she had been called as a young woman, she had
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been called diva. She sang and that was one of
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the things that her father, one of the kinds of
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00:15:45.039 --> 00:15:47.799
lessons her father had given her to shoot a beautiful voice.
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And everywhere she went people would ask her to sing it,
317
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and she did. It was her trademark. And I think
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afterwhy she got pretty tired of it. You know, it
319
00:15:55.679 --> 00:15:57.759
was sort of like it's almost at the very end
320
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of her life. One of the very very last public
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00:16:00.120 --> 00:16:03.799
appearances that she made was at Smith College, one of
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the first is the Women's College, and when she got there,
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of course there it went again. And I think at
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that moment your Julie's kind of rolling her eyes and thinking,
325
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not again, here we go. But it was it was
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her trademark, and people wanted to honor her. And even
327
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now it is played all over the world. It has
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become something that's played at state funerals of great leaders,
329
00:16:26.120 --> 00:16:31.759
and whether not just Americans certainly, certainly British, certainly other countries,
330
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it's played at inaugurations and it's played at funerals.
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So it was a mighty achievement.
332
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Does a term that literary critics use for a poet
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00:16:42.879 --> 00:16:45.039
who has only one great poet, who call.
334
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Her a mono poet? Okay, so she was a mono poet.
335
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But if you've only going to write one poem that
336
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was the poem to write, you could be famous to
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one poet. You could do a lot worse right, And
338
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Americans know it by heart. So everything came together in
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that moment, and I think the idea of a battle
340
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him that title being.
341
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Given to it was so expressive.
342
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Of her own sense of fighting, of having a battle
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in her marriage as the country was going through.
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A terrible battle.
345
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And I sometimes think maybe this is an overstatement, and
346
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I don't usually like to say things like the most
347
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or the best or the most power. But I think
348
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it's our best song as America. I really do. I
349
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think it's our most important song in our history and
350
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our best song, especially given the context.
351
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I wouldn't disagree with you at all.
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I mean, for a long time people wanted to make
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it the national anthem, and I think it was a
354
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loss that they didn't. That you did a lot easier
355
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to sing the Stars Bank. I mean, nobody, we do it. Everybody,
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you know, everybody's voices breaks trying to do that, even musicians.
357
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No.
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I think it would have been a great national myth
359
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of Teddy Rooseveld. I think was the last president who
360
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really tried. But it is something that everybody knows, and
361
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that's kind of helpful.
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And she had the glory of that.
363
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And it's very interesting about you know, what's happened to
364
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the manuscript if you would want to know, I mean
365
00:18:13.640 --> 00:18:16.640
the original. There were two versions that were very valuable.
366
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The first one was her handwritten copy and it was
367
00:18:21.440 --> 00:18:23.319
sent She sent it to her one of her best
368
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friends in Boston signed and it went through various stages.
369
00:18:29.039 --> 00:18:32.720
But in twenty twelve, I mean, Issella's manuscript is still around.
370
00:18:33.359 --> 00:18:36.400
It was signed by how It was autographed, and it
371
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was sold by Christie's for seven hundred and eighty two
372
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thousand dollars, which is not bad. Yeah, And actually I
373
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know who owned it before that. It had been owned
374
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by Malcolm Forbes. Wow, and he had kept in his collection.
375
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But I don't know where it is now where that manuscript,
376
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It's in private hands.
377
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But it became more and more valuable.
378
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Well, you know, if that was the only thing in
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her career, then it would be a wonderful career, be
380
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a wonderful and very American career. But then she goes
381
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on to after the war to push for female suffrage.
382
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I find I find this part of her life just fascinating.
383
00:19:15.359 --> 00:19:16.359
Well, it is fascinating.
384
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I identified with it so profoundly. I mean, I learned
385
00:19:21.279 --> 00:19:23.880
so much about Juliet Wardhowe. I was writing the book.
386
00:19:24.319 --> 00:19:26.160
You know, ninety eight percent of what it's in the
387
00:19:26.200 --> 00:19:29.519
biography I didn't know when I started. And she has
388
00:19:29.880 --> 00:19:32.799
her papers, in the papers of the whole how family,
389
00:19:32.799 --> 00:19:36.519
which was a huge family, are in the Harvard Library
390
00:19:36.599 --> 00:19:40.200
and they are vast, I mean, absolutely enormous. So there's
391
00:19:40.240 --> 00:19:42.519
a lot to find out about her and a lot
392
00:19:42.559 --> 00:19:47.079
that she recorded. But her relationship to the women's movement
393
00:19:47.799 --> 00:19:50.960
is one of the most aspiring things for me. She
394
00:19:51.559 --> 00:19:54.799
had never thought of herself as a feminist, and when
395
00:19:54.839 --> 00:19:59.839
the war was over she became. Really you asked me
396
00:20:00.119 --> 00:20:02.480
or how she became a pacifist, it was, you know,
397
00:20:02.680 --> 00:20:06.519
going through the Civil War, seeing the incredible carnage of
398
00:20:06.559 --> 00:20:09.079
the Civil War, she became. She was not a pacifist
399
00:20:09.119 --> 00:20:11.559
at all when it started, but she was a pastist
400
00:20:11.599 --> 00:20:14.480
by the end. And the house lost their own son,
401
00:20:14.759 --> 00:20:16.920
who was just an infant. So although they didn't have
402
00:20:16.960 --> 00:20:20.599
a military loss, they had a personal loss and grief,
403
00:20:20.640 --> 00:20:23.799
and that pushed her in the direction of pacifism.
404
00:20:24.240 --> 00:20:25.359
But when the war was.
405
00:20:25.359 --> 00:20:30.599
Over, almost accidentally, she went to her first suffrage meeting
406
00:20:30.640 --> 00:20:36.039
and this was in Boston. And despite her intuitive feminism,
407
00:20:36.079 --> 00:20:38.599
I mean, she was you know, she was born. Her
408
00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:41.640
family made her a feminist because you know, the way
409
00:20:41.680 --> 00:20:44.559
they treated her. But she hadn't really thought of herself
410
00:20:44.559 --> 00:20:50.599
in those terms, and the reputation of suffragists was so awful.
411
00:20:51.039 --> 00:20:56.440
They were considered, you know, just so ugly, unfeminine, childless
412
00:20:56.480 --> 00:20:59.279
cat ladies, you know, that kind of thing. No decent
413
00:20:59.319 --> 00:21:02.920
Boston made wanted to identify with them. But she was
414
00:21:03.400 --> 00:21:07.240
quite determined. And she read in the newspaper in Boston
415
00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:09.759
that there was going to be a meeting of the
416
00:21:09.880 --> 00:21:13.240
what would become the New England Women's Suffrage Association. There
417
00:21:13.240 --> 00:21:16.559
would be a meeting at the Unitarian Church, and in
418
00:21:16.559 --> 00:21:18.519
fear and trembling, she decided to go.
419
00:21:19.079 --> 00:21:21.759
And she says it was a rainy day, and she says, I.
420
00:21:21.720 --> 00:21:25.240
Wore my rain garment, which I imagined to look like
421
00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:26.000
a trench.
422
00:21:25.759 --> 00:21:28.319
Coat, you know, and what a rain garment looked like.
423
00:21:28.839 --> 00:21:31.599
And she pulled up the hood and she snuck into
424
00:21:31.640 --> 00:21:35.079
the Unitarian church and sat in the very back and
425
00:21:35.119 --> 00:21:38.680
there were the suffragists up in the front, and one
426
00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:41.640
by one they started to speak, and it was like love,
427
00:21:41.680 --> 00:21:44.039
it's at first sight, Kudafula. I mean, they got up
428
00:21:44.119 --> 00:21:47.920
and these are my sisters. These are not the women
429
00:21:47.960 --> 00:21:50.160
that I've been reading about. This is my soul, this
430
00:21:50.279 --> 00:21:54.440
is it. And she immediately presented herself and identified. So
431
00:21:54.480 --> 00:21:57.119
it was it was really, you know, meant to be
432
00:21:57.200 --> 00:21:59.920
and she she got it right away. And I didn't
433
00:22:00.079 --> 00:22:01.880
know this when it happened to me, but this very
434
00:22:01.960 --> 00:22:03.759
much the way I joined the women's movement.
435
00:22:04.400 --> 00:22:05.640
I was living in Princeton.
436
00:22:06.039 --> 00:22:08.480
I had been in Paris with my husband and had
437
00:22:08.519 --> 00:22:11.799
seen what French feminism was like in nineteen sixty nine,
438
00:22:11.880 --> 00:22:14.839
during the sixty eight and sixty nine, and when I
439
00:22:14.880 --> 00:22:17.559
came back it was just beginning to start in the US.
440
00:22:18.160 --> 00:22:21.799
And in Princeton, we had a little freetown paper that
441
00:22:21.880 --> 00:22:24.319
came around and there was a little teeny notice in
442
00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:30.000
it that said, on Thursday, seven pm gathering and the
443
00:22:30.119 --> 00:22:33.279
Unitarian Church's where everything is. Even now you want to
444
00:22:33.720 --> 00:22:36.279
you know, you have any issue as a parent or whatever,
445
00:22:36.599 --> 00:22:39.160
just go to the Unitarian Church. So it was announced
446
00:22:39.200 --> 00:22:42.440
the Unitarian Church, and I, not knowing about you, I said, okay,
447
00:22:42.759 --> 00:22:45.119
I'm going to go, and I put on my raincoat
448
00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:48.559
and exactly the same experience. Went to the Unitarian Church.
449
00:22:49.119 --> 00:22:51.240
And that was my first meeting with the Women's movement.
450
00:22:51.759 --> 00:22:54.720
And it was a tremendous.
451
00:22:54.319 --> 00:22:59.200
Moment for Julia, not only to meet a group of
452
00:22:59.559 --> 00:23:03.880
women who so much shared her values and her political
453
00:23:04.160 --> 00:23:09.119
energy and her courage, you know, but also to meet
454
00:23:09.119 --> 00:23:11.039
a group of women who would become her friends.
455
00:23:11.759 --> 00:23:13.759
She has not had that many women friends.
456
00:23:14.079 --> 00:23:16.400
She had two sisters and they were very, very close,
457
00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:19.000
but they were all married. They were scattered around the
458
00:23:19.039 --> 00:23:22.480
world at that point, and the idea of being part
459
00:23:22.640 --> 00:23:27.240
of a crusade of women was very important to her personally.
460
00:23:27.240 --> 00:23:30.640
And she really loved being in the women's movement. Speaking
461
00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:33.240
for the women's movement. She loved traveling around the country,
462
00:23:33.519 --> 00:23:37.079
which she eventually did, to all kinds of small towns
463
00:23:37.119 --> 00:23:41.559
and dusty planes, you know, villages and so on, and
464
00:23:41.599 --> 00:23:42.720
meeting the local women.
465
00:23:43.119 --> 00:23:45.079
It was a very fulfilling moment.
466
00:23:45.519 --> 00:23:48.240
That really was to be the direction of the second
467
00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:48.960
half of her life.
468
00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:52.640
Well, she doesn't live, of course, to see women's suffrage
469
00:23:52.720 --> 00:23:57.319
pass in the United States. No, but she continues along
470
00:23:57.720 --> 00:24:01.440
other lines. And I think one of the most fascinating things,
471
00:24:01.480 --> 00:24:05.200
and it's completely overlooked. It's been swamped by our current.
472
00:24:05.279 --> 00:24:07.839
I'll put that in quotation. Marks version of Mother's Day
473
00:24:08.519 --> 00:24:13.240
was her famous proclamation in eighteen seventy about that. Yeah,
474
00:24:13.400 --> 00:24:15.759
how did she come to Well, first of all, let's
475
00:24:15.799 --> 00:24:18.920
tell you you don't mind telling everyone what that proclamation
476
00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:21.119
was about. But how did she come to be that
477
00:24:21.279 --> 00:24:22.359
kind of pacifist.
478
00:24:22.759 --> 00:24:25.200
Well, it came out of her pacifism, and it came
479
00:24:25.240 --> 00:24:28.880
on the occasion of another war, and this was after
480
00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:33.440
the Fraango Frussian War, and she started to think about
481
00:24:33.480 --> 00:24:36.720
the nature of war itself. Julia thought of herself as
482
00:24:36.759 --> 00:24:39.839
a philosopher, philosopher man kay because she was a woman.
483
00:24:40.119 --> 00:24:42.559
She couldn't really take herself here, or she wasn't taken
484
00:24:42.599 --> 00:24:46.119
seriously as a philosopher. But a lot of her private
485
00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:50.440
reading was in philosophy. She really enjoyed delving into philosophy
486
00:24:50.440 --> 00:24:54.119
and thinking about the most abstruse thinkers of her time.
487
00:24:54.839 --> 00:24:58.680
And she thought that there was something very important about
488
00:24:58.680 --> 00:25:01.759
the philosophy of war, and something that was gender. When
489
00:25:01.799 --> 00:25:05.319
she had written about the Civil War, she had thought
490
00:25:05.599 --> 00:25:08.440
that the Civil War was a kind of holy war.
491
00:25:08.759 --> 00:25:11.279
It was really a war, you know, a good war,
492
00:25:11.559 --> 00:25:12.119
just war.
493
00:25:12.079 --> 00:25:13.400
War that had to be fought.
494
00:25:13.440 --> 00:25:16.440
But she thought that other wars, the Franco Prussian War
495
00:25:16.480 --> 00:25:17.680
certainly were unholy.
496
00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:21.160
And she felt that women ought to be the leaders.
497
00:25:21.160 --> 00:25:24.440
Of a movement for peace because they were the mothers
498
00:25:24.839 --> 00:25:28.200
of the country. They had stakes of love and devotion
499
00:25:28.680 --> 00:25:33.319
and thought that mothers, if mothers could unify against the war,
500
00:25:33.599 --> 00:25:37.039
that could be a powerful form of organization, an important
501
00:25:37.039 --> 00:25:37.559
way to go.
502
00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:40.880
So she wrote a proclamation, calling it a sermon.
503
00:25:40.920 --> 00:25:43.160
She thought it might be used in church, that could
504
00:25:43.160 --> 00:25:45.559
be given on a special Mother's.
505
00:25:45.200 --> 00:25:46.960
Day in church every year.
506
00:25:47.240 --> 00:25:49.279
Her idea was that Mother's Day every year would be
507
00:25:49.279 --> 00:25:51.640
on the second of June, and she wrote it down
508
00:25:51.799 --> 00:25:56.119
a rise, then, women of this day arise, all women
509
00:25:56.200 --> 00:26:00.000
who have hearts, say firmly, we will not have great question,
510
00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:04.400
since decided by irrelevant agencies, our sons shall not be
511
00:26:04.519 --> 00:26:07.680
taken from us to unlearn all that is we have
512
00:26:07.759 --> 00:26:11.640
been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
513
00:26:11.960 --> 00:26:14.240
We women of one country will.
514
00:26:14.079 --> 00:26:17.480
Be too tender of those of another country to allow
515
00:26:17.640 --> 00:26:21.200
our sons to be trained to injure thors. So it
516
00:26:21.240 --> 00:26:23.920
came out of her feminism, the idea that as women
517
00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:28.880
could identify with mothers everywhere, and that her political feelings
518
00:26:28.920 --> 00:26:31.400
and her feminist feelings really came.
519
00:26:31.279 --> 00:26:32.359
Together at this moment.
520
00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:35.519
So she issued this call, and that would be Mother's Day,
521
00:26:35.720 --> 00:26:39.000
and it's now people don't acknowledge it. On Mother's day
522
00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:42.359
every year, very really acknowledge it, and it's just, you know,
523
00:26:42.440 --> 00:26:45.160
a gift by an occasion, you know, a good day
524
00:26:45.160 --> 00:26:49.240
for Hallmark greeting cards, but not as a pacifist and
525
00:26:49.319 --> 00:26:50.799
political statement for women.
526
00:26:50.920 --> 00:26:53.240
Well, you see, this is what I'm kind of getting at.
527
00:26:53.440 --> 00:26:56.319
She has the Battle him in eighteen sixty one, she
528
00:26:56.559 --> 00:27:00.319
has the push for suffrage very very early, yeah, you know,
529
00:27:00.599 --> 00:27:04.559
and then the Proclamation of eighteen seventy. And by the way, listeners,
530
00:27:04.680 --> 00:27:08.319
the Franco Prussian War was particularly brutal because it was
531
00:27:08.359 --> 00:27:11.480
the first major industrial war, so the death tolls were
532
00:27:11.519 --> 00:27:13.680
just enormous, and even in the United States people were
533
00:27:13.720 --> 00:27:16.960
reading these horrible accounts of soldiers being ground down by
534
00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:20.640
machines essentially. But anyway, so the battle Hymn, the suffrage movement,
535
00:27:20.839 --> 00:27:24.359
and then the Proclamation for peace. This is the triple
536
00:27:24.440 --> 00:27:27.839
crown of heroism in an historical figure. It seems to
537
00:27:27.839 --> 00:27:30.440
me it is, Yeah, you know, Julia wardhowse should be
538
00:27:30.599 --> 00:27:33.160
on our currency, her portraits should be on our currency,
539
00:27:33.160 --> 00:27:37.720
and one of the people should be She's extremely extremely significant.
540
00:27:37.839 --> 00:27:40.680
I thought so too. I mean, I wrote the biography
541
00:27:40.720 --> 00:27:41.559
with that in mind.
542
00:27:41.799 --> 00:27:45.880
And people don't know women to be celebrated anyway. But
543
00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:48.960
you know, we have so little public statuary for women,
544
00:27:49.279 --> 00:27:52.759
even you know where Julia is buried in Boston.
545
00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:55.200
I mean her tombstone says daughter of.
546
00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:01.039
Wife of sc how you know women's She doesn't have
547
00:28:01.200 --> 00:28:04.960
even a monument of the kind that she should have.
548
00:28:05.440 --> 00:28:08.759
And you're absolutely right, there are very few things named
549
00:28:08.799 --> 00:28:12.000
for her. There's no college named for her. There aren't
550
00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:14.599
that many streets named for her. It's a scandal.
551
00:28:14.759 --> 00:28:17.720
It is a scandal. There should be a monument outside
552
00:28:17.799 --> 00:28:21.720
DC at roughly the point where she crosses the lines
553
00:28:21.720 --> 00:28:24.720
and hears the soldiers singing John Brown's body.
554
00:28:25.039 --> 00:28:27.640
Yeah, well there are to be a statue outside the
555
00:28:27.640 --> 00:28:28.400
Willard Hotel.
556
00:28:28.559 --> 00:28:31.039
Well, yeah, absolutely little plaque.
557
00:28:31.079 --> 00:28:33.920
You would never notice it. Absolutely.
558
00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:38.400
I mean, our women are so so uncelebrated. And you know, maybe,
559
00:28:39.039 --> 00:28:40.799
well let's see what happens this year.
560
00:28:40.880 --> 00:28:43.039
I don't know, you can always.
561
00:28:43.359 --> 00:28:45.920
It's just there's a lot more to be done. That's
562
00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:49.119
really good to say about that. And she was in
563
00:28:49.160 --> 00:28:53.720
her lifetime, she saw herself become a national.
564
00:28:53.319 --> 00:28:55.519
Figure, a national treasures.
565
00:28:55.680 --> 00:28:59.119
Her reputation outpaced that of her husband, and his was
566
00:28:59.160 --> 00:29:02.240
really huge, very large. He was a huge philanthropist. He
567
00:29:02.359 --> 00:29:05.119
founded the Perkin School for the Blind. He was a
568
00:29:05.200 --> 00:29:08.359
doctor who taught the blind and deaf, so he had,
569
00:29:08.440 --> 00:29:11.799
you know, enormous prestige. But by the time she died,
570
00:29:12.359 --> 00:29:15.599
nobody even remembered who he was. And that was I
571
00:29:15.640 --> 00:29:18.680
think was welcomed her. She's not so modest. You know,
572
00:29:18.759 --> 00:29:19.200
she's going to.
573
00:29:19.200 --> 00:29:20.039
Shrug it off.
574
00:29:20.359 --> 00:29:23.599
But I think that, you know, that fades away so fast.
575
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:26.599
It's one of the things that fascinated me about writing
576
00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:30.480
the biography of Julia Ward. How is that there are
577
00:29:30.519 --> 00:29:34.400
so just generally, there are so few biographies of great women,
578
00:29:34.720 --> 00:29:37.759
and even if there are, they absolutely don't approach the
579
00:29:37.839 --> 00:29:43.240
scale of biographies of men. There are only two biographies
580
00:29:43.240 --> 00:29:46.880
of women that are three volumes. There are dozens of
581
00:29:46.920 --> 00:29:50.519
biographies of men go into multiple volumes. I mean for women,
582
00:29:51.039 --> 00:29:54.640
you know, one volume is planning two. Oh my god,
583
00:29:54.640 --> 00:29:57.759
when Tori A gets two, you know, nobody else gets
584
00:29:57.799 --> 00:30:01.279
more than one. But when Julia died, her daughters, who
585
00:30:01.359 --> 00:30:06.519
were all writers, published a kind of biographer of her,
586
00:30:06.680 --> 00:30:09.599
really a kind of memoir includes lots and lots of
587
00:30:09.839 --> 00:30:13.319
letters and journals, and that was very important, and it
588
00:30:13.400 --> 00:30:17.279
won the Pulitzer Prize. For biography, the very first one
589
00:30:17.319 --> 00:30:21.319
that was ever given. So yeah, that's something and I
590
00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:25.279
like that. But really it's a fight to keep women's
591
00:30:25.319 --> 00:30:29.000
history alive. It's just one of the first things to
592
00:30:29.079 --> 00:30:33.039
go and it isn't preserved, and it isn't visible. And
593
00:30:33.119 --> 00:30:35.160
I think raising the question of the monument is so
594
00:30:35.400 --> 00:30:38.440
key in Washington. There are all these tours of Washington.
595
00:30:38.920 --> 00:30:42.079
None of the tours talk about Julia Ward. How nobody
596
00:30:42.119 --> 00:30:43.440
stops to tell that story.
597
00:30:43.440 --> 00:30:45.400
In fact that I'm talking to you, I'm thinking, hmmm,
598
00:30:46.599 --> 00:30:49.799
o Ed, I'm getting this in my mind. I'm obvious.
599
00:30:49.880 --> 00:30:52.759
Why not, Well, then, professor, you know, one of the
600
00:30:52.799 --> 00:30:56.680
reasons we're doing this show this week is because there
601
00:30:57.279 --> 00:31:00.400
is an election coming up, and we don't like to
602
00:31:00.440 --> 00:31:04.079
promote political parties on the show, but this election is
603
00:31:04.319 --> 00:31:07.400
just life and death for the country. And when you
604
00:31:07.480 --> 00:31:09.839
and I were talking about how we're going to approach
605
00:31:09.839 --> 00:31:13.200
this interview before we started talking we restore recording, you
606
00:31:13.279 --> 00:31:15.240
said something like, well, of course we know that it's
607
00:31:15.279 --> 00:31:18.680
not the national anthem, but there's something. There's a time
608
00:31:18.720 --> 00:31:20.720
and a place for this to be played, and if
609
00:31:21.160 --> 00:31:23.799
the right things happen in November, it might be played
610
00:31:23.799 --> 00:31:27.240
in January. Please tell the listeners what you mean by that.
611
00:31:27.400 --> 00:31:28.000
This could be.
612
00:31:28.079 --> 00:31:32.039
I mean, I can imagine it's always always played at
613
00:31:32.079 --> 00:31:35.880
the inauguration of American presidents, and if it could be
614
00:31:36.039 --> 00:31:40.599
Kamala Harris, Julia's kind of I don't know her work
615
00:31:40.680 --> 00:31:44.640
or sequence. I cannot imagine a great or fulfillment of.
616
00:31:44.519 --> 00:31:46.680
What she would have dreamed, what she would have.
617
00:31:46.680 --> 00:31:48.960
Wanted, and to have the battle him played at the
618
00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:52.119
inauguration as the first woman president of the United States,
619
00:31:52.319 --> 00:31:54.039
she would love to deliver it. And I think, you know,
620
00:31:54.119 --> 00:31:57.319
those of us have a lot of us are hoping
621
00:31:57.359 --> 00:31:59.599
to live to see it, but it would be perfect,
622
00:32:00.039 --> 00:32:00.920
perfect moments.
623
00:32:01.200 --> 00:32:03.559
Well, it's only really left for me to say thank
624
00:32:03.599 --> 00:32:05.799
you so much, doctor Showalter for coming on the show.
625
00:32:06.039 --> 00:32:08.119
Well, thank you so much. It's been fun talking.
626
00:32:07.799 --> 00:32:10.200
To you and folks. The book The Civil Wars of
627
00:32:10.279 --> 00:32:12.920
Julia Ward Howe is on the Buzzkill bookshelf on the
628
00:32:12.920 --> 00:32:15.599
blog post for this week, and because we're doing Julia
629
00:32:15.640 --> 00:32:18.400
Ward shows all week, we will talk to you tomorrow