The Radical Origins of Mother's Day

As much as I love brunch, bouquets of spring flowers and cards with adorable hand-prints on them, these were not the intended outcome of Mother's Day when it was first suggested. The origins of this day fall to abolitionist, suffragist, author and total boss in petticoats, Julia Ward Howe, who was herself a mother of six. Ward Howe wrote her "Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870 as a call for mothers of all nations to join in a council of peace, never again to see their sons and husbands lost to the violence and destruction of war.

Ward Howe had not always been a pacifist. In fact she authored the lyrics to The Battle Hymn of the Republic to champion the fight for freedom of enslaved people. But after witnessing the carnage and chaos of the Civil War, her political activities began to include anti-war activism as well as the campaign for suffrage for women and the formerly enslaved.

Here is Ward Howe's proclamation in full. It is still full of fire and passion. I dare you not to be roused!

“Arise, then… women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts,

whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!

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 vindicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough 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 council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means

whereby the great human family can live in peace,

each bearing after [their] own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask

that a general congress of women, 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