Mother's Day for Peace
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe issued the following manifesto. Though her efforts to institute a nationally-recognized Mother's Day for Peace failed, it was celebrated in Boston for at least ten years. The cause was later taken up by others, but sadly the Joint Resolution of Congress signed by Woodrow Wilson in 1914 establishing Mother's Day failed to mention women's activism, focusing instead on their role in the family.
MOTHER'S DAY PROCLAMATION, 1870
by Julia Ward Howe
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.
[cross-posted at ProgBlog: Progressive Ideas for the Masses]
