This is the complete text of Howe's 1870 proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
We will not have 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 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 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 to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at 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.

Thanks for the Howe quote, Styles. Your posting is both timely and pointed, given the past week. It's beyond irony that one of the young soldiers in those photos is 5 months pregnant and looking toward motherhood.

And special thanks for reminding those of us who are mothers of the sacred obligation we bear to the sons and daughters of all.

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