View source for Mother's Day Proclamation

{{Short description|1870 essay by Julia Ward Howe}}
{{over-quotation|date=January 2024}}
{{Infobox document
| document_name        = Mothers' Day Proclamation
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| caption              = 
| title_orig           = Appeal to womanhood throughout the world
| date_created         = {{start year|1870}}
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| commissioned         = 
| writer               = [[Julia Ward Howe]]
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| media_type           = 
| subject              = Feminism, politics, gender
| purpose              = Appeal for women to unite
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The '''"Appeal to womanhood throughout the world"'''<ref name="appeal"/> (later known as '''"Mothers' Day Proclamation"''') by [[Julia Ward Howe]] was an appeal for women to unite for peace in the world. Written in 1870, Howe's "Appeal to womanhood" was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the [[American Civil War]] and the [[Franco-Prussian War]]. The appeal was tied to Howe's [[feminist]] conviction that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.

The original Mothers' Day Proclamation, Julia Ward Howe, 1870:<blockquote>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 his 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.</blockquote>In 1872 Howe asked for the celebration of a "Mothers' Day for Peace" on 2 June of every year, but she was unsuccessful.<ref name="leigh">{{cite book | title = Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays | author = LEIGH Eric Schmidt | edition = reprint, illustrated | editor = Princeton University Press | editor-link = Princeton University Press | year = 1997 | pages = 252, 348 (footnote 17 of chapter 5) | publisher = Princeton University Press | isbn = 978-0-691-01721-1 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=maF8mTPsJqsC }} citing Deborah Pickman Clifford, ''Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Biography of Julia Ward Howe (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 187, 207, and Julia Ward Howe, "How the Fourth of July Should Be Celebrated", ''Forum'' 15 (July 1983); 574''</ref> The modern [[Mother's Day]], was established by [[Anna Jarvis]] 36 years later.  While the day she established was different in significance from what Howe had proposed, Anna Jarvis was reportedly inspired by her mother's work with Howe.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://peacealliance.org/history-of-mothers-day-as-a-day-of-peace-julia-ward-howe/|title=History of Mothers' Day as a Day of Peace: Julia Ward Howe|website=The Peace Alliance|date=8 May 2015|access-date=May 12, 2019}}</ref><ref name="leigh" />

Today, an edited version of the appeal is included in the [[Unitarian Universalist]] hymnal ''[[Singing the Living Tradition]]''.

==Appeal to womanhood throughout the world==
{{quote|1=Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before.

Arise, then, Christian women of this day ! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your 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, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his 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.|2=Julia Ward Howe<ref name="appeal">{{citation |title= Appeal to womanhood throughout the world |publisher= Library of Congress |author= Julia Ward Howe |date= September 1870 |work= An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera |url= http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/rbpebib:@field(NUMBER+@band(rbpe+07400300))}}</ref><ref>Howe, Julia Ward. "Mothers' Day proclamation. (World Notes)." Catholic New Times 1 June 2003: 11. Academic OneFile. Web. 12 May 2012.</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Goldberger|first=Ben|title=A Mother's Day Proclamation: Peace|url=http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/api/version1/getDocCui?oc=00240&hl=t&hns=t&hnsd=f&perma=true&lni=4NPY-NY30-TWHV-H2DH&hv=t&csi=11064&hgn=t&secondRedirectIndicator=true|accessdate=14 May 2012|newspaper=The Chicago Sun-Times|date=May 13, 2007}}</ref>}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}
{{Feminism}}
[[Category:Hymns]]
[[Category:1870 documents]]
[[Category:Pacifism]]
[[Category:Proclamations]]
[[Category:Feminist works]]
[[Category:Mother's Day]]