Julia Ward Howe: A Mothers Crusade against War

This week we pause from our regular schedule of sermons to reflect upon one of the venerable holidays in our country whose origins might surprise and amaze you. Hopefully it will also inspire you. Mother’s Day did not originate in the minds of card makers or floral designers or even chocolatiers. It originated in midst of blood, pain, horror, devastation and trauma. It came as a result of the Civil War that ripped apart families, disrupted communities, and scarred the soul of an entire nation.

The story of Mother’s day originates in the overlapping but not intersecting work of two women: Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis. Today I will look at the work of Julia Ward Howe. Tomorrow I will look at the work of Anna Jarvis.

Julia Ward Howe was born in 1819 in New York City. She was associated with her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, in his humanitarian work and in editing and contributing to the Boston Commonwealth, an antislavery paper. Inspired by a visit to a Union army camp during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Howe wrote the famous poem "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which, after publication in The Atlantic Monthly in 1862, immediately achieved great popularity as a song of the Civil War. After the war, Howe was active in the women's rights movement as a founder of both the New England Woman's Club and the Association for the Advancement of Women. She also headed the American branch of the Woman's International Peace Association. (from the National Women’s Hall of Fame, Copyright©1998).

Although Howe was a strong advocate of the cause of the Abolition of Slavery, and in principle in support of the Union cause n the Civil War, she could not ignore the devastation wreaked upon the country by the war. The wars that were also being waged in Europe caused her to consider what might be done to encourage the nations of the world to seek other, nonviolent means for settling conflicts and disputes. She writes about this in her memoir, Reminiscences, 1819-1899, (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899; pp 327-329):

I had felt a great opposition to Louis Napoleon from the period of the infamous act of treachery and violence which made him emperor. The Franco-Prussian war was little understood by the world at large. To us in America its objects were entirely unknown. On general principles of good-will and sympathy we were as much grieved as surprised at the continual defeats sustained by the French. For so brave and soldierly a nation to go through such a war without a single victory seemed a strange travesty of history. When to the immense war indemnity the conquerors added the spoliation of two important provinces, indignation added itself to regret. The suspicion at once suggested itself that Germany had very willingly given a pretext for the war, having known enough of the demoralized condition of France to be sure of an easy victory, and intending to make the opportunity serve for the forcible annexation of provinces long coveted.

 

As I was revolving these matters in my mind, while the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed.  I  did not dare to make this public without the advice of some wise counselor, and sought such an one in the person of Rev. Charles T. Brooks of Newport, a beloved friend and esteemed pastor.

 

The little document which I drew up in the heat of my enthusiasms implored woman, all the world over, to awake to the knowledge of the sacred right vested in them as mothers to protect the human life which costs them so many pangs.  I did not doubt but that my appeal would find a ready response in the hearts of great numbers of women throughout the limits of civilization.  I invited these imagined helpers to assist me in calling and holding a congress of women in London, and at once began a wide task of correspondence for the realization of this plan.  My first act was to have my appeal translated into various languages, to wit: French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, and to distribute copies of it as widely as possible.  I devoted the next two years almost entirely to correspondence with leading women in various countries.  I also had two important meetings in New York, at which the cause of peace and the ability of women to promote it were earnestly presented.

This is the proclamation that she authored to summon women around the world to the cause:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of fears!

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 devasted 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 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 the means whereby the great human family can live in peace,

And each bearing after her own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

Sadly, most of her efforts in regard to a women-based peace movement did not bear the fruit she had envisioned. Many women’s energies and efforts were directed toward rebuilding family life following the wars or towards the cause suffrage for women, of which she was an ardent supporter.

More information on Julia Ward Howe can be found at:

http://www.juliawardhowe.org/bio.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Ward_Howe

http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/juliawardhowe.html

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/howejuliaward/a/about_julia_ward_howe.htm

(Images: Julia Ward Howe from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JuliaWardHowe.jpg; http://www.juliawardhowe.org/bio.htm;  http://womenshistory.about.com/od/howejuliaward/a/about_julia_ward_howe.htm; bouquet from http://www.flowers-for-all-occasions.co.uk/images/aspiring%20pink.jpg)