The True Meaning of Mother’s Day

By Sydney Smith

Confederate soldier near Spotsylvania Court House, VA (Library of Congress)

“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. ”
~William Tecumseh Sherman (Union General)

This article by Dr. Gary Kohls highlights a little known fact of Mother’s Day: that its earliest incarnation was as a proclamation against war.

Certainly the cards, breakfast in bed, gifts, flowers, and a little respect for all the unsung work that mothers do, don’t go unappreciated. But the holiday’s original intent was to give mothers an even greater gift, more time with their sons.

The first mother’s day was proclaimed in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe an abolitionist, suffragette and social activist, who is probably most famous for authoring “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which she wrote after visiting a Union Army camp. Howe was deeply effected and troubled by the horrors and death toll of the American Civil War and she drafted her Mother’s Day Proclamation with the belief that women could play a vital role in resolving conflict and creating peace.

 Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870:

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

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 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.

“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.”

 Wishing a Happy and peaceful Mother’s Day to all.