Happy Mothers Day.

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Happy Mothers Day.

Original Mothers Day Proclamation, Ward Howe: 1870

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 decided by irrelevant agencies.

'Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of 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 to 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 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 solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his 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 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.

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In 1870, Ward Howe of Boston, Massachusetts, the famous lyricist of 'Battle Hymn of the Republic", appalled at that time by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, wrote the above proclamation, had it translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, and disseminated it internationally.

In 's own words, "The question forced itself on me, 'Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of human life, which they alone bear and know the cost? I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibility now appeared to me in a new aspect."

went to London in 1872 to try to organize her conference, and when an established peace organization there would not let her speak to them because of her gender, she hired a hall and conducted her own meetings. However, this work did not come to any quick fruition, and returned to Boston.

But Ward Howe did not give up. She began to promote a festival to be known as Mothers' Day, to be devoted to the advocacy of peace, and to be celebrated on June 2 each year, which in Boston is a good time for outdoor meetings and in the midst of the flower season.