Mothers' Day - The Jarvises and Julia Ward Howe

Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis created Mothers' Work Days to promote worker health and safety, organize women to work for better sanitary conditions, to tend the wounded of both sides in the Civil War, for reconciling Union and Confederate neighbors, and for pacifism and social activism. Her daughter, Anna Jarvis , founded a memorial day for mothers and the International Mother's Day Shrine .

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared a national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war. By the 1920s, Jarvis had her fill of the commercialization of the holiday and spent her inheritance campaigning against it. She incorporated herself as the Mother's Day International Association, claimed copyright on the second Sunday of May, and was once arrested for disturbing the peace.

Julia Ward Howe , author of the words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic”, worked with widows and orphans of soldiers on both sides of the Civil war, and analyzed the economic devastation. Determined that peace and equality were most important, she called for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. Howe fought aggressively for women's' right to vote, (with Lucy Stone formed the American Woman Suffrage Association) and worked against slavery. In 1870 , Howe wrote a call for peace and disarmament, and promoted " Mother's Day for Peace " to be celebrated on June 2.

Mother's Day Proclamation

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 voice 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 our 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.