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Subject: The Original Mother's Day Proclamation

The Original Mother's Day Proclamation (Thanks to Jim Vance for passing
this on)

Mother's Day is, of course, the preeminent Hallmark holiday today,
complete with flowers, cards, chocolates, stuffies, breakfast-in-bed,
and the like.   Nor would I want it otherwise. Mothers (generally)
deserve such pampering. But Mother's Day was not always as it is now.
Mother's Day was started by Julia Ward Howe in the 19th century in an effort to bring to an end
the horrors of warfare. Below is her original Mother's Day Proclamation,
which is as relevant today as the time of its writing, in 1870.
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Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

by Julia Ward Howe

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 voice 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.

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