Who wrote a 'Mother's Day Proclamation' in 1870?

Julia Ward Howe wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation” in 1870. Its original title was “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world,” and it called on women to unite against war and work for peace.

Howe was an American poet, abolitionist, feminist, and suffragist best known for writing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Her proclamation responded to the destruction caused by the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. It urged mothers and women of different nations to oppose the sending of their sons and husbands into armed conflict.

Howe later proposed an annual “Mother’s Day for Peace” on June 2, but her campaign did not create the modern American holiday. Anna Jarvis’s movement, decades later, led to the national observance proclaimed in 1914. The two women are connected by peace activism, but Howe’s proclamation was not the same holiday Jarvis established.