Thanksgiving Proclamations

Details: 18 November 2011

Started by George

Thanksgiving, a civil holiday celebrated in the United States on the last Thursday of each November, became an official and annual national holiday in 1863, during the administration of President Abraham Lincoln. However, it appears to have been first observed by President George Washington, who issued the first presidential proclamation of national Thanksgiving to God in 1789. He wrote, "Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, Who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be, that we may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation, for His signal and manifold mercies, for the favorable interposition of His providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted. for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge, and in general for all the great and various favors which He hath been pleased to confer upon us."

In His proclamation, Washington goes on to say that he is proclaiming a national day of Thanksgiving to God "that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations, especially such as have shown kindness unto us, and bless them with good governments, peace, and concord, to promote the knowledge of true religion and virtue and the increase of science among them and us, and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best."

The States

Washington cited a series of precedents for his action, particularly certain days of Thanksgiving to God which had been established by the Continental Congress following the American victories at Saratoga and Yorktown, during the Revolution.

Presidents John Adams and James Madison subsequently issued Thanksgiving proclamations, but the other presidents up until the time of Lincoln preferred to leave such undertakings to the governors of the States. The custom grew rather rapidly. By the 1840’s a Thanksgiving holiday was celebrated in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, and Pennsylvania. Lincoln himself issued a first Thanksgiving proclamation in 1863, telling the people to thank God for the victories of the Union Armies at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

However, Lincoln was persuaded to establish another national Thanksgiving holiday in that same year of 1863, and to make it perennial, largely through the untiring efforts of an enthusiastic woman named Sarah Josepha Hale.

Mrs. Hale

Mrs. Hale was the editor of a 19th century influential woman’s magazine called "Godey’s Lady Book", and from the 1840’s she was unrelenting in her determination to have an annual Thanksgiving Day in the United States celebrated on the last Thursday of every November. She wrote editorial after editorial on the matter and her magazine illustrated many features telling housewives on how to celebrate such a holiday. With regularity she published articles about historical Thanksgiving celebrations recorded among the early English settlers in America, especially in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Jamestown, Virginia. She continually wrote to all the governors of the States and territories, urging them to persuade the Congress and the President to establish such a national holiday. Finally, she managed to touch the right note for persuading Lincoln when she kept insisting that such a national holiday would promote reconciliation in the country when it was being torn and divided by the Civil War, and, thus, he instituted this national holiday that perdures to this day.

Initially the day was basically a home and church event, but the "add-ons" came soon. By the 1880’s football, especially the Yale-Harvard Game at the Polo grounds, began to be part of the occasion. In 1934 the Detroit Lions established their custom of playing a Thanksgiving Day game, first broadcast on radio and then on television. In 1924 Macy’s Department Store began having their annual Christmas parade in New York on Thanksgiving, and now that seems to have become an American Thanksgiving Day custom.

Lincoln

Lincoln wrote in 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 cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. 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."

Lincoln went on to write, "It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and 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 at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a Day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father Who dwelleth in the heavens. And I do 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 who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union."