| The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday
in May. In the United States, Mother's Day was inspired by the
British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe
after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to
unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day
Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her
attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her
idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker
who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through
what she called Mother's Work Days. She organized women throughout
the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides,
and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate
neighbors.
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