Shortly before midnight [J.W. Howe] found herself sitting at the writing desk in the corner of the room. She wrote rapidly, which was unusual for her. Heretofore she had always found rhyming difficult, but on this cold gray dawn her pen flew across the paper, scratching out the lines that were to make her name live in history. It was so dark in the room that she could scarcely see the paper, but she did not bother to light the candle on the desk. She wrote as one inspired. If this was her mission in life, she was fulfilling it magnificently.

Long after daylight, when she awakened, she found that she had written a poem of five verses on a sheet of stationery paper from the Sanitary Commission...She recalled vaguely sitting at the desk, but remembered nothing of what she had written. Yet there it was, so well written that she felt compelled to change only four words in the entire work. It was entitled "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", but she could recall [writing] neither the verses nor the title.