Julia Ward Howe and the History of Mother’s Day

Julia Ward Howe is one of the women that can be claimed to have some of the credit for establishing the holiday where we celebrate mothers. Of course, the woman most often credited with Mother’s Day is Anne Jarvis and her daughter. However, Julia Ward Howe is credited with influencing Anne Jarvis, and thus helping her take the steps to making Mother’s Day an official holiday.

So, who is Julia Ward Howe? And how come she gets some of the credit for Mother’s Day? Julia is a poet from Boston who helped create Mother’s Day by attempting to create day for peace. She is also the author to Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Julia was a women’s sufferage activist during the Civil War, and based on her life experiences, molded her beliefs. Julia had a horrible marriage, and had seen all kinds of terrible things in the war, and felt as though women needed to learn to take on more of a social responsibility, and do more than just tend for her husband. The world she had seen convinced her that women needed to take action, and so she wrote a proclamation to address her cause. She felt that equality and peace are the two most important things a woman can strive for. So, she called them together to rise up and oppose war in all its forms, especially the Franco-Prussian War.

Her idea was that if women would come together, crossing all of the national lines, and forget their differences, rather bond over their similarities as women, wives, and mothers, they could come together and make a change. She hoped to create a “Mother’s Day for Peace.” It failed, but it inspired Anne Jarvis, and others to create a day dedicated to mothers.

The following is a look at the Mother’s Day Proclamation from 1870 that Julia Ward Howe wrote:

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will 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, the 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 a 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 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 counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God –
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And 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.