JULIA WARD HOWE - CLIPPED SIGNATURE - HFSID 49519

JULIA WARD HOWE
Clipped letter salutation signed "Believe me yrs truly"
Clipped signature: "Believe me/yrs truly/Julia Ward Howe", ½x3¾ irregularly cut from a letter. Howe (1819-1910, born in New York City), a social reformer and poet, is best known for writing the poem The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which she was inspired to write after visiting army camps in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War. Howe's poem, first published in the February 1862 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, was later set to music to the tune of the popular antislavery song John Brown's Body and became the unofficial song of the Union Army. Howe later turned her fervor against slavery into a crusade for women's rights. She was a co-founder (1868) and first President of the New England Woman's Suffrage Association, co-led (with Lucy Stone) the American Woman Suffrage Association (1869) and founded the Women's International Peace Association (1871). In 1870, Howe assisted Stone and her husband, Henry Blackwell, to establish the Woman's Journal, and served as an editor and writer for the publication for 20 years. Howe, who also wrote poems for other women's journals and founded the Boston Authors Club, was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1908).Lightly toned. Irregularly trimmed. Fold in lower portion, not affecting signature. Show-through from handwriting on opposite, which touches salutation but not signature. Otherwise in fine condition.