The American Idea

In the winter of 1861, the second editor in chief of The Atlantic, James T. Fields, received a letter from Julia Ward Howe, the abolitionist and suffragist. Attached to her letter was a poem she hoped to see published in this magazine. The letter is worth reading in full:

Fields!

Do you want this, and do you like it, and have you any room for it in January number? I recd. your invitation to meet the Trollopes just five minutes before my departure for Washington, so could only leave a verbal answer, hope you got it.

I am sad and spleeny, and begin to have fears that I may not be, after all, the greatest woman alive. Isn’t this a melancholy view of things? but it is a vale, you know. When will the world