In February 1862, Julia Ward Howe, an accomplished poet with numerous works to her credit, published “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the prominent magazine The Atlantic Monthly in support of the Union headed by President Abraham Lincoln. Set to the music of an old folk song, the poem was inspired by a visit Howe took to a Union Army camp near Washington, D.C., soon after the start of the Civil War in 1861 and written soon thereafter. Prior to the outbreak of the war, she and her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, were both strong public advocates of the abolitionist movement, a stance they maintained as the conflict unfolded by calling for the formal end to slavery that Lincoln ultimately mandated by issuing the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.