Professor Cynthia Wachtell on Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation
Last week, I received an email message from the Ploughshares Fund, a nuclear disarmament advocacy foundation, asking, "What does Mother's Day Mean to You?" Suspecting that the correct answer was something other than a dozen roses and a box of chocolates, I read on:
Over the years, we've lost the original meaning of Mother's Day to Hallmark-style commercialism. ...Mother's Day originally grew out of abolitionist Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation in the wake of the Civil War, calling for a day for women to promote peace and disarmament.
As it happens, I was already familiar with Julia Ward Howe's "Mother's Day Proclamation."
In 1870 Howe drafted the forceful pacifist manifesto鈥攁lso known as her "Appeal to Womanhood throughout the World"鈥攊n which she called upon women worldwide to protest war and demand universal disarmament. "The sword of murder is not the balance of justice," she declared.
Howe wanted women to join together for a day to advocate for peace.
Cynthia Wachtell is an assistant professor of American literature and director of the S. Daniel Abraham Honors Program at 糖心破解版. She is the author of (Louisiana State University Press, 2010).
