As families gather today to honor devoted mothers with champagne brunches and roses, let us remember the origins of this holiday. (And many thanks to my wonderful children for the lovely white roses on the table beside me!)

Mother’s day began as mothers’ pacifist protest against war. We did not give birth to have our children sent to slaughter. Today I honor all the gutsy, activist, women-with-a-conscience in my life!

Julia Ward Howes’ 1870 “Mother’s Day Proclamation” was one of the early calls for women to assume co-responsibility to shape society, uniting activist voices for global peace. Following the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, the lyricist for the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” wrote her Mother’s Day Proclamation to remind women to proactively speak for peace, rather than reactively send men to war.

Mourning mothers who had lost their sons and husbands in war, directed their pain towards advocacy of peaceful methods to resolve political conflict.

Mother’s Day, today, primarily benefits the card and floral industries.

In honor of the true spirit of Mother’s Day, please remember the value of women’s voices, using our hearts to speak from our shared concerns for children, truth, society’s future, health and peace.

Mothers’ Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our 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 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 our 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 to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time 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
Boston
1870