here's julia ward howell again. i told you she'd come back to haunt is today. julia ward howell increasingly focused on her position as a mother, which of course is what is driving her support for suffrage. her position as a mother to say that women are different than men. that women really can do society better than men have done. and what really sets her off is not only did she live through the civil war and watch the incredible carnage of the war, remember, she's in washington in the end of '61, seeing the circling fires around washington, seeing one of her friend one of the first people killed in the war. after the franco prescription drugs prussian war, she decided enough was enough and that women really had to take over the society. sle said after the franco prussian war, said i was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary cruelness of the contest. seemed a return to barbarism. the question forced itself upon me. why don't the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and

now, this is always the part where i want to talk a little bit about julia ward howell. a ward howell is the same woman who wrote the battle hymn of the republic in 1862. especially through her writing. she's actually a brilliant thinker. her diaries are at harvard. and she is -- she becomes involved in the american woman's suffrage association because she really wants the vote. now, she's a much more moderate character than say elizabeth katy stanton. her husband is abusive and every time she wants to leave him, he says, great, go, you'll never see your kids again. because in this era, children are the property of their fathers. and if women divorce their husbands, in fact, they can be kept from the kids. so she stays married to him and she tries to continue to have access to the kids. and the great part of this story is, he's really awful to her. i read through her diaries a few years ago. he's really awful to her. he keeps trying to get her to destroy the diaries. that he's really the shining light in the couple because he's a very famous reformer. and i always try to

in a moment, you're going to hear more about julia ward howell. put it this way. she said, when we are writing that 14th amendment, women should be included. women belong in that amendment. they should have rights under that amendment. of course when congress is discussing the 14th amendment at great length, some congressmen actually do introduce the idea that women should be included in the 14th amendment and that women should be considered full citizens with a say in american society. and they're laughed out. the idea that somehow women should have rights and should be able to participate in american society is just a non-starter in 1868. this so suffragists, especially those who had worked so hard for the war, just really stung. julia ward howell said the civil war came to an end leaving the slave not only emancipated but endowed with the full dignity of citizenship. the women of the north had greatly helped open the door which admitted him to freedom and safeguard the ballot. was this door to be shut in their face? in 1868, when that door was shut in their fac

now, this is always the part where i want to talk a little bit about julia ward howell. julia ward howell is the same woman who wrote the battle hymn of the republic in 1862. especially through her writing. she's actually a brilliant thinker. her diaries are at harvard. and she is -- she becomes involved in the american woman's suffrage association because she really wants the vote. now, she's a much more moderate character than say elizabeth katy stanton. her husband is abusive and every time she wants to leave him, he says, great, go, you'll never see your kids again. because in this era, children are the property of their fathers. and if women divorce their husbands, in fact, they can be kept from the kids. so she stays married to him and she tries to continue to have access to the kids. and the great part of this story is, he's really awful to her. i read through her diaries a few years ago. he's really awful to her. he keeps trying to get her to destroy the diaries. that he's really the shining light in the couple because he's a very famous reformer. and i always try