“Kill Bill 1776”: The Mothers’ Movement, Maternalism, and the ‘Defense of the United States’, 1940-1941’

Set within the context of the wider pro-/anti-interventionist debate regarding responses to the outbreak of war in Europe and answering the essential question of how best to secure the ‘defense of the United States’, this paper addresses the reaction of the “motherhood of America” to the conflict. For these ultraconservative mothers, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his supporters were the primary actors in pushing the United States towards intervention in what they referred to as “Britain’s war”. As a result, they were the primary targets for vilification in their efforts to save “their boys”. Focussing on three prewar occurrences, the passing of the Selective Service Act (1940) and H. R. 1776, usually referred to as the Lend-Lease Bill, (1941) and the sinking of the USS Reuben James (1941), this paper argues that responses and actions in the years 1940-41 were a key impetus in politicizing motherhood and the establishment of the anti-World War II Mothers’ Movement.