MOTHER'S DAY Proclamation of l870, Mother's Peace Day

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Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870

Mother's Peace Day The first person to fight for an official Mother's Day

celebration in the United States was Julia Ward Howe. You may be more familiar

with her name as the writer who wrote the words to the Civil War song, The

Battle Hymn of the Republic:

 

" Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

 

Howe was born in New York City on May 27, 1819. Her family was well respected

and wealthy. She was a published poet and abolitionist. She and her husband,

Samuel Gridley Howe, co-published the anti-slavery newspaper The Commonwealth.

She was active in the peace movement and the women's suffrage movement. In 1870

she penned the Mother's Day Proclamation. In 1872 the Mothers' Peace Day

Observance on the second Sunday in June was held and the meetings continued for

several years. Her idea was widely accepted, but she was never able to get the

day recognized as an official holiday. The Mothers' Peace Day was the beginning

of the Mothers' Day holiday in the United States now celebrated in May.

 

The modern commercialized celebration of gifts, flowers and candy bears little

resemblance to Howe's original idea. Here is the Proclamation that explains, in

her own powerful words, the goals of the original Mother's Day in the United

States...

 

 

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 bosum 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.

 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if on some distant Mother's Day, the wishes of Julia

Ward Howe could be fulfilled and the human race could celebrate a day when, all

over the world, no mother would have to mourn the death of her child lost in war

or terrorist attacks...

 

To all of the mothers whose children are fighting in wars - and to mothers

whose children are growing up with wars raging around them or with terrorism

threatening their safety... Wishes of strength, peace and hope for this Mother's

Day...

 

http://www.chiff.com/a/mothers-day-origins.htm

 

 

" Respect means listening until everyone has been heard and understood, only

then is there a possibility of " Balance and Harmony " the goal of Indian

Spirituality. " Dave Chief, Grandfather of Red Dog

 

 

 

 

 

 

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