When the nineteenth century was winding down, and she had become an old lady, Julia Ward Howe had her palm read by âan expert.â The reader traced the wrinkled lines and exclaimed, âYou inherit military blood; your hand shows it!â Possibly it did. Howe had martial forebears on both sides of her family. One was South Carolinaâs Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion, the celebrated âSwamp Foxâ who had bedeviled the British while hiding with his brave band of patriots in Low Country marshes.
Yet the lady with the pugnacious palm hated war. She had tried to organize mothers of the world against it, even to the point of holding a Womenâs Peace Congress and lobbying for a worldwide Motherâs Day fifty years before Anna Jarvis persuaded Woodrow Wilson to proclaim the second Sunday in May as such. Mrs. Jarvis wanted mothers memorialized; Mrs. Howe had wanted them mobilized.