Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe
Did you know the purpose of the first Mother's Day was to protest against war? After the American Civil War, in 1970 social activist Julia Ward Howe was the first to call for observance of this special event with her Mother's Day Proclamation [for peace] which reads:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devasted earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice! Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace,
And each bearing after her own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" which, ironically, she later said she regretted writing.
A Unitarian, after the Civil War Howe focused her activities on the causes of pacifism and women's suffrage. From 1872 to 1879, she assisted Lucy Stone and Henry Brown Blackwell in editing Woman's Journal
On January 28, 1908 Howe became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Howe was inducted posthumously into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
She was featured on a 14 cent US stamp issued in 1987.
WORKS AND PAPERS
Howe Papers at Harvard University
Articles by Howe Archive at "Making of America" project, Cornell University Library
Poetry at the University of Toronto
Mother's Day Proclamation (1870)
Julia Ward Howe.org Electronic archive of Howe's life and works
Finding Aid for the Julia Ward Howe Papers at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
