The Story of Two Women

Julia Ward Howe

Fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else.

Born in New York in 1819, Howe was devoted to her family and committed to bettering the world. During the Civil War, she longed to make a contribution. In her autobiography, Howe told of one night when “attack of versification” came upon her. She crept out of bed in the dark so as not to wake her baby, Sam, and scribbled down the words to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The poem made its way into the Union camps, where soldiers put the words to music. The verses won Howe national acclaim; some even called her the “Queen of America.”

She pondered the brutality of war and a question came to her: “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?” She knew the cost. Her three-year-old son Sammy had died of diphtheria in 1863, leaving her bereft. Perhaps this loss woke her to the terrible madness of the battlefield: everyone who dies, even the enemy, is some mother’s child.

She rallied women from around the world to gather for “an earnest day of council,” and developed a plan to designate the second day of June Mother’s Day, devoted to the cause of peace. Howe held observances in Boston for several years. In places as far away as Istanbul, others also celebrated Mother’s Day for Peace. Eventually, Julia Ward Howe gave up her campaign. She regretted her decision but felt that “the time for this was at hand, but had not yet arrived.”

Her dedication to suffrage and women’s rights provided an ironic backdrop to later developments; Mother’s Day was used to combat the burgeoning women’s movement. Julia Ward Howe didn’t live to see that evolution or to obtain the vote in 1920. She died at 92, just as suffragettes gained increasing momentum.

 

Anna Jarvis

In 1905 when Anna Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna, began a campaign to memorialize the life work of her mother. Legend has it that young Anna remembered a Sunday school lesson that her mother gave in which she said, “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers.”

Anna Jarvis, born in 1864 and originally from West Virginia, left home at 27 and lived most of her adult life in Philadelphia, teaching at school. Upon her mother’s death, a devastated Anna Jarvis wrote fervently, commenting on her mother’s love of family. In 1907, Jarvis exalted her mother by pursuing a day of remembrance for all mothers.

Jarvis lobbied for a religious holiday to honor mothers. Politicians and clergymen, alarmed by suffrage proponents, responded enthusiastically; they offered Mother’s Day instead of the vote.

Tireless, Anna Jarvis wrote to newspapers, politicians, and churches, trying to incite interest in Mother’s Day. The time was right.

Anna began to lobby prominent businessmen like John Wannamaker, and politicians including Presidents Taft and Roosevelt to support her campaign to create a special day to honor mothers. At one of the first services organized to celebrate Anna’s mother in 1908, at her church in West Virginia, Anna handed out her mother’s favorite flower, the white carnation. Five years later, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling for officials of the federal government to wear white carnations on Mother’s Day.

By 1910, many clergymen and politicians had declared Mother’s Day a holiday. Then, in 1914, Woodrow Wilson and the United States Congress issued proclamations setting aside the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. The President ordered all government buildings to fly the American flag on that day “as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of this country.”

Why did Jarvis’ campaign succeed? Church historian Eric Schmidt speculates that church and civic leaders were responding to the discomfort engendered by the women’s suffrage movement. The holiday celebrated women in the home, not out on the street endangering motherhood and family. Mother’s Day provided an antidote to the menace.

In 1912, suffragettes turned more activist. They held mass demonstrations, including one that upstaged Woodrow Wilson on the day of his inauguration. In the midst of this militancy came the Mother’s Day declaration from a President and Congress opposed to women’s suffrage. The 1914 Mother’s Day Bill said the “American mother is doing so much for the home, for moral uplift, and religion, hence so much for good government and humanity...”

Anna’s hard work paid off when Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother’s Day as a national holiday.

At first, people observed Mother’s Day by attending church, writing letters to their mothers, and eventually, by sending cards, presents, and flowers.

Floral promoters also capitalized on the social concerns of the time, promoting flowers as symbols of purity, womanhood, and domesticity. For a while, Anna Jarvis joined forces with the flower industry, telling people to wear white carnations to church on Mother’s Day (a practice still common today).

With the increasing gift-giving activity associated with Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis became enraged. She believed that the day’s sentiment was being sacrificed at the expense of greed and profit. In 1923 she filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s Day festival, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention selling carnations for a war mother’s group. Before her death in 1948, Jarvis is said to have confessed that she regretted ever starting the mother’s day tradition.

Despite Jarvis’s misgivings, Mother’s Day has flourished in the United States. In fact, the second Sunday of May has become the most popular day of the year to dine out, and telephone lines record their highest traffic, as sons and daughters everywhere take advantage of this day to honor and to express appreciation of their mothers.