President Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving Day by Proclamation on October 3, 1863. You can read the proclamation below.
Abraham Lincoln
Did you know that Thanksgiving wasn’t an official American holiday until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln made a proclamation establishing Thanksgiving Day? A lot of people don’t know that. We are taught that it is a tradition passed down from our Pilgrim forefathers who celebrated a bountiful harvest with the Natives in the American Colonies. Of course, that IS where it started. But it wasn’t regularly practiced and there was not a holiday until a century or two after the original harvest feast that brought ALL Americans together for a day of celebration.
Abraham Lincoln was one in a line of Presidents who had been asked to establish a day of Thanksgiving by a woman named Sarah Hale. None of his predecessors saw a reason to do it, or felt like bothering with it. However, in the hard years of the Civil War, Lincoln saw the need to bring the country together as one in celebration and Thanksgiving for the blessings we have been giving merely by virtual of being born in this wonderful country.
And so, at the urging of Sarah Hale and in an attempt to heal a broken country, Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday in November as a national holiday.
Now you can’t say you didn’t learn anything at Blue Star Chronicles today. Unless, of course you had remembered that from your school years, but I think most people don’t associate Abraham Lincoln with Thanksgiving!
Here is a video about the original Thanksgiving.
Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day
October 3, 1863
The year that is drawing towards 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. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled 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 theatre of military conflict; while that theatre 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 defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the 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 battle-field; 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 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 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 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, 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 third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
A. Lincoln
November 27th, 2008 at 2:47 am
Here, here and cheers. Have a pleasant holiday.
November 27th, 2008 at 7:15 am
No, Beth, Lincoln did not establish this holiday. Presidents do not have the power to do that. You know that, don’t you? Besides, this is only one of several proclamations suggesting a day of thanksgiving–also known as days of fasting and humiliation–that Lincoln issued, all of them related directly to his war. Presidents since Washington had done that, state governors still do, and royal governors and other heads of state have done this across Christendom since time immemorial.
But no, Lincoln did not establish this holiday. That’s not even what this proclamation is about.
November 30th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Thank you, God for our great Presidents and our outstanding Founding Fathers. Thank you for the purity of the Pilgrims which set great and decent standards for our nation to follow.
God bless America