Mother's Day Proclamation

 

 In 1872, Julia Ward Howe, author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" proposed an annual Mother's Day for peace.  Committed to abolishing war, she wrote the famous Mother's Day Proclamation and for the next 30 years, American women celebrated the "Mother's Day for Peace" on June 2nd. Then, for some strange reason, the celebration day ended...until 1913 when Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother's Day.  America was now more consumer-oriented, and the new advertising industry quickly taught Americans how to honor their mothers; hence, the commercialism that we see today, and since then, Mother's Day has ballooned into a million dollar industry.

Mother's Day Proclamation

Arise, then, women of this day!  Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fear.

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 devastated 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 foresaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now lead all that may be left of a home for a great and earnest day of counsel!  Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.  

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not if Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of woman without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe

Boston, MA

1870