## Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, An American History

by Diana Karter Appelbaum

Facts on File Publications 1984

CHAPTER 10: THE CIVIL WAR; SARAH HALE AND LINCOLN

# Both Sides Celebrate Days of Thanksgiving

Pages 142-149

\[T\]he Confederate Provisional Congress acted in accord with tradition
by resolving, in recognition of the hand of God in the "glorious
victory," that the following Sunday, July 28, be observed as a day of
thanksgiving.

When November came, governors throughout the North proclaimed
Thanksgiving Day, and President Lincoln gave federal employees a
holiday. The date occasioned the first Thanksgiving proclamation from
the governor of the new state of West Virginia. Thursday, November 28,
was the date chosen in all states except Massachusetts and Maine, which
selected November 21, also a Thursday November 21 was also the
anniversary of the signing in 1620 of the Mayflower Compact. In that
famous document, settlers aboard the *Mayflower* set out a framework for
the government of their new society---the first such voluntary
constitution of government in the colonies.

The symbolism was apt, for although the dispute that led to secession
was about slavery, the war between the states was being fought by the
North for the principle of constitutional Union.

Thanksgiving sermons that year focused on the importance of lawful,
constitutional government. They considered the justifiability of
defending such a government by the use of arms and attempted to define
the rare occasions . . . when citizens might be justified in rebelling
against their government.

Like Jefferson Davis, who proclaimed a thanksgiving after the southern
victory at Bull Run, Lincoln acted in the tradition of proclaiming
thanksgiving days for special events. Sunday, April 13 \[1862\], was
designated a day of thanks for signal victories of "the land and naval
forces engaged in suppressing an internal rebellion, and" for having
averted "from our country the dangers of foreign intervention and
invasion."

The date chosen fell precisely 47 years after the last presidential
Thanksgiving proclamation, issued by James Madison for April 13, 1815,
in gratitude for the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis acknowledged this hour of triumph
by proclaiming a day of thanksgiving for Thursday, September 18, 1862,
in gratitude for the victories at Bull Run and at Richmond, Kentucky, on
August 20.

When the season for Thanksgiving proclamations came around in the North,
many Confederate sympathizers, savoring the heady scent of Confederate
victory at Bull Run, confidently waited for the Union to give up the
war.

Each \[Union\] regiment observed Thanksgiving Day by authority of the
governor of its home state. Regiments assembled on Thanksgiving morning
to hear the proclamation read, followed by a speech by the commanding
officer or a sermon by the chaplain, if the regiment had one. Relieved
from routine duties, soldiers spent the day relaxing or playing ball.

# A National Thanksgiving is Proclaimed

Pages 153-

Thanksgiving Day, August 6, 1863, like the Thanksgiving of April 13,
1862, and the two Confederate thanksgivings, was a special day of
thanksgiving proclaimed by the government in grateful celebration of
victory on the battlefield. On September 28, 1863, indefatigable Sara
Josepha Hale sat in her Philadelphia office and wrote a letter to
President Lincoln as "Editress of the 'Lady's Book,' . . . laying before
you a subject of deep interest . . . even to the President of our
Republic. . . . This subject is to have the *day of our annual
Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival*. . . ."

Thanksgiving was already an annual holiday proclaimed by every northern
governor. What Mrs. Hale wanted was an annual proclamation by the
president fixing a uniform date and legal enactment of Thanksgiving as a
national holiday whose observance could not be omitted by the whim of
some future chief executive.

On October 3, Lincoln proclaimed a nationwide Thanksgiving Day for the
last Thursday of November 1863---a Thanksgiving proclaimed not in
celebration of military victory but in gratitude for a "year filled with
the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies." It was a
Thanksgiving in the New England tradition of setting aside a Thursday in
autumn to give thanks for "general causes." Counting the many blessings
for which Americans could be grateful, Lincoln reminded his fellow
citizens that "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."

The actual proclamation was drafted by Secretary of State William
Seward, who brought considerable experience to the task, having issued
four Thanksgiving proclamations during his tenure as governor of New
York.

"I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United
States, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and
observe the last Thursday in November next as a day of thanksgiving and
praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." For a
nation about to be reunited, this truly was a day of Thanksgiving.

# The End in Sight

Pages 157-161

In the proclamation he issued for Thursday, November 24, 1864, Lincoln
counseled his "fellow citizens . . . that on this occasion they do
reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up
penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of
Events for a return to the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and
harmony throughout the land."

1864 was the second year in which Lincoln set the final Thursday in
November as a national day of thanksgiving. Before another November came
around, this noble man had been murdered, but his successors respected
the precedent he set. They have proclaimed Thanksgiving Day every autumn
since.