Happy Thanksgiving to you and those you love!
Here's a cool bit of history. As you may know, the first Thanksgiving was in 1621 with the pilgrims. But it wasn't until the mid-1800s that it was proclaimed a national holiday.
On
October 3, 1863,
Lincoln
issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation, for the first time setting aside the last
Thursday in November as a National Day for giving thanks, setting the precedent
for the annual holiday we will celebrate tomorrow.
Here’s his Proclamation:
"The year that is drawing toward its close has been
filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these
bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the
source from which they come, others have been added which are of so
extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the
heart which is habitually insensible to the
ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude
and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to
provoke their aggression, peace has been
preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been
respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the
theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by
the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and
of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have
not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the
borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of
our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.
Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made
in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the
consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect
continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal
hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us
in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly,
reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by
the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in
every part of the United States,
and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last
Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent
Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
And I recommend to them that while offering
up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and
blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and
disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows,
orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are
unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand
to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be
consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony,
tranquillity, and union.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and
caused the seal of the United States
to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington,
this 3d day of October, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence
of the United States
the eighty-eighth.
Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P.
Basler. Rutgers University Press, 1953.
