Framed Small Print - Mother's Day Proclamation - "Happy Mother's Day"

SCW ©2004. Quote by Julia Ward Howe. Design SCW. Reformer, writer, poet and lecturer, Julia Ward Howe co-founded (with Lucy Stone and others) the New England Women's Club, which later became the American Woman Suffrage Association. She also worked for world peace, in 1891 founding the American Friends of Russian Freedom and serving as president of the United Friends of Armenia in 1894. The immediate stimulus for her 1870 Mother's Day proclamation was the Franco-Prussian was, which she believed to be an egregious example of war as "a cruel and unnecessary contest...the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed." (from her Reminiscences, 1819-1899) Throughout her life she worked to expand the avenues open to women confined to unhappy marriages like her own. Despite her many accomplishments and work for justice, she is most often remembered today as author of the lyrics toThe Battle Hymn of the Republic.