The encroachments of the slave power on Northern soil--Green Peace, the home of Julia Ward Howe, a center of anti-slavery activity--She assists her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, in editing the _Commonwealth_--He is made chairman of the Vigilance Committee--Slave concealed at Green Peace--Charles Sumner is struck down in the United States Senate. The “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “the crimson flower of battle,” bloomed in a single night. It sprang from the very soil of the conflict, in the midst of the Civil War. Yet the plant which produced it was of slow growth, with roots reaching far back into the past. In order to understand how this song of our nation sprang into sudden being we must study that stormy past--the prelude of the Civil War. How greatly it affected my mother we shall see from her own record, as well as from the story of the events that touched her so nearly. My own memory of them dates back to childhood’s days. Yet they moved and stirred my soul as few things have done in a long life. Therefore I have striven to give to the present generation some idea of the fervor and ferment, the exaltation of spirit, that prevailed at that epoch among the soldiers of a great cause, especially as I saw it in our household. * * * * * Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel. So many years have elapsed since the evil monster of slavery was done to death that we sometimes forget its awful power in the middle of the last century. The fathers of the Republic believed that it would soon perish. They forbade its entrance into the Territories and were careful to make no mention of it in the Constitution. The invention of the cotton-gin changed the whole situation. It was found that slave labor could be used with profit in the cultivation of the cotton crop. But slave labor with its wasteful methods exhausted the soil. Slavery could only be made profitable by constantly increasing its area. Hence, the Southern leaders departed from the policy of the fathers of the Republic. Instead of allowing slavery to die out, they determined to make it perpetual. Instead of keeping it within the limits prescribed by the ancient law of the land, they resolved to extend it.