Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall 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 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 our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often 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 then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may 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.
Julia Ward Howe, 1870
Politically, I’m against the idea that people should be for peace “as mothers”; I don’t beleive that women have some innate liking of peace that men lack. (The best essay on this is Katha Pollitt’s “Marooned on Gilligan’s Island,” which – alas – doesn’t seem to be available online). Nonetheless, it’s good to remember that Mother’s Day actually stood for something, once upon a time..
I just posted the speech as well. I think we should make this an annual blog tradition. :)
I always thought that was the origin of Mother’s day too. But it turns out to go back further. Apparently in England there was something called “Mother’s Sunday” where masters gave servants one Sunday a year to visit there mothers. (Servants were often children.)
Given that particular class origin, I’ll probably stick with “Mother’s Peace Day” as a better story.
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garlppublic followed by the at sign then comcast and dot and net. = avoiding autoharvesters.
Yeah, not available online, but here is a neat little Mother’s Day sermon that cites it.
It’s so very _Lysistrata_. I love it. And I thought we were just celebrating greeting cards…
I dunno, Amp, I guess I see a difference between being for peace “as women” and being for peace “as mothers.”
I think of being a woman as something you are, while motherhood is something you do. I don’t like the idea of attributing certain political positions (or innate qualities) to people based on their race or gender, but I think of this as more akin to being for peace “as a Quaker” or “as a historian.”
*shrug*
Still just a minor quibble.
—JRC
But you have to keep the history in mind–women really had no SAY back then. In order to make an antiwar voice heard, when the men in power were creating a war, she would have to organize with other women; specifically, mothers. Same thing in _Lysistrata_.
It’s important to be careful about reading history through a contemporary lens.
Isn’t this the woman who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, with wierd politico-religious lines about God striking down the enemies of America with a “terrible swift sword”? Hard to buy an argument for peace from that song’s author.
There’s a new biography out about Julia Ward Howe. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds very interesting. She seems to have struggled with the patriarchal messages for a long time. That may explain her very different creations at different points in her life.
Yes, Julia Ward Howe wrote “Battle Hymm of the Republic,” but after directly witnessing the horrors of the Civil War, she became a pacifist. When war talk began again in 1870, she said women of the world should unite and not send our sons out to kill other mother’s sons–creating the first Mother’s Day for Peace. I suppose in some right wing thought,it would be called “flip-flop” But the actual direct experience of war can change your feelings about war and you will want to exhaust other alternatives first. Our president never had the direct experience or had a son or brother or father die in a war.
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa013100d.htm
I just linked to this post in reference to some thought I was having about “Mother’s Day” and birthdays.
JRS Personal Blog – June 21, 2004
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