Mother's Day for Peace

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

Mother’s Day in the United States began as a peace day.

Following the Civil War groups of mothers of Confederate and Union soldiers met together for consolation. Anna Reeves Jarvis held a Mother’s Friendship Day to reunite families that had been divided during the war and she hoped that Mother’s Day would become an annual occurrence. Her daughter, Anna M. Jarvis, worked for a national Mother’s Day to honor both her mother and peace.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote the first Mother’s Day Proclamation. Earlier she had written the Battle Hymn of the Republic, but she became outraged at the carnage of both the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. She called for a summit of mothers for the promotion of peace.

She wrote in part:

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 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 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.

Julia Ward Howe was a writer, a social activist, and and an active Unitarian, including being a preacher in that denomination. Her Mother’s Day Proclamation is included in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition.

I urge mothers and those who have or have had mothers to give a thought to peace and the lack of peace. I urge the good people of this country to give a thought to peace in and for the United States and the world and to the policies of the United States toward that peace. Even more, I encourage people to live in and work for peace themselves. I do believe peace is possible if we aim for it knowing that peace itself is the way. I note that even Osama Bin Laden was a mother’s child.