In addition to his work for the blind, Doctor Howe edited an anti-slavery paper called the _Boston Commonwealth_, and his wife helped him with that task. Garrison, Sumner, Phillips, Higginson and Theodore Parker became their friends and co-workers. To balance the reformers, Edwin Booth, Holmes, Longfellow and Emerson were frequent guests, drawn by the magnet of Mrs. Howe’s personality. The slavery question became more and more acute, and soon the country was plunged into civil war. Every earnest woman longed to be of some immediate service to the nation and to humanity. Mrs. Howe was fired with the desire to help. Her husband was beyond the age for military duty, her oldest son was a lad, the youngest child two years old. She could not leave home as a nurse. She lacked the practical deftness to prepare lint and hospital stores. She seemed to have nothing to give, there was nothing for her to do. If only her gift for verses were not so slight! If she could but voice the spirit of the hour! During the autumn of 1861 Julia Ward Howe visited Washington. With friends she went to watch a review of the northern troops, at some distance from the city. While the maneuvers were going on, a sudden movement of the Confederates brought the pageant to a close. Detachments of soldiers galloped to the assistance of a small body of men in danger of being surrounded and cut off from retreat; while the troops remaining were ordered back to camp. The carriage with the Boston visitors returned very slowly to Washington, for soldiers filled the roads. There were tedious waits while the marching regiments passed them. To beguile the time and to relieve the tense situation, they sang snatches of popular army songs, and one of these was _John Brown’s Body_. “Good for you!” called out the passing boys in blue, and joined in the chorus with a will, “His soul goes marching on.” “Mrs. Howe,” asked James Freeman Clarke, who was in the carriage with her, “why don’t you write some really worthy words for that stirring tune?” “I have often wished to do it,” she replied. And that night her wish was fulfilled. Very early, in the gray of the morning twilight, she awoke and as she waited for the dawn the poem came to her, line by line, till the first stanza was finished. Phrase by phrase, and another stanza! The words came sweeping over her with the rhythm of marching feet. Resistlessly the long lines swung into place before her eyes. “Let us die to make men free, while God is marching on,” and the _Battle Hymn of the Republic_ was achieved.