Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation made it a national holiday. He was the one who made the last Thursday of November the official date.
And, before I get too deep into this article, Happy Thanksgiving to all of us who put TravelersUnited.org together every day. May your day be filled with happiness, good friends and appreciation for the good we have in life.
Many believe the first Thanksgiving took place in 1621. It became official in 1863.
Most Americans trace the harvest festival back to 1621 when local Native Americans and Pilgrims celebrated together as the beginning of Thanksgiving. However, harvest festivals were a tradition that dates back thousands of years.
As you may have heard, the story of the Pilgrims and the Indians’ first Thanksgiving is more legend than fact. Yes, English colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans gathered for a harvest festival in 1621.
Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday in 1863
However, Thanksgiving was not suggested as a national holiday until the mid-1800s. Sarah J., editor of God’s Lady’s Book, a popular magazine for women in 19th-century America. Hale campaigned for years to make Thanksgiving a nationally celebrated holiday. He wrote to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to issue a proclamation. Hale noted in his letter that having such a national day of Thanksgiving would establish “America’s great union festival.”
At the time he wrote his proclamation regarding this national holiday, he was writing the first version of his famous Gettysburg Address. The Thanksgiving holiday proclamation was issued on October 3, 1863, and the New York Times published the text of the Thanksgiving proclamation.
Here is Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation
October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States
a thanksgiving proclamation
The year that is moving towards its conclusion is filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthy skies. To these rewards, which are so constantly enjoyed that we forget the source from which they come, others have also been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensitive to the constant vigilance of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which at times appears to foreign States to invite and provoke their aggression, peace has been maintained 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 growing armies and navies of the Union.
In the midst of civil war…
The necessary diversion of wealth and power from the sphere of peaceful industry to that of national defense has not prevented the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; The ax has expanded the limits of our settlements, and the mines have produced, as well as iron and coal and precious metals, even more abundantly than before. In spite of the devastation caused in camp, siege, and battlefield, the population has steadily increased, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of increased strength and power, allows itself to be expected for a continuation of years with great increase of freedom.
No human counsel has devised it, nor has any mortal hand accomplished these great things. They are the merciful gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, still remembers mercy.
I invite fellow citizens to celebrate Thanksgiving Day
It seemed to me right and proper that they should be received with one heart and one voice, solemnly, reverently and gratefully, by the entire American people. Therefore, I invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to celebrate and celebrate the last Thursday of next November as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our generous Father in heaven. And I advise them that, having duly paid Him homage for such singular deliverance and blessing, they should, with humble repentance for our national perversity and disobedience, commend His tender care to all who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably involved, and fervently implore the intercession of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds. nation, and to restore it, as soon as possible, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union, in harmony with the divine purposes.
We still celebrate Thanksgiving
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused to be sealed with the seal of the United States of America.
Done at the City of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-third, and of the Independence of the United States of America in the eightieth year.
abraham lincoln
Photo and signature from Wikimedia Commons
Charlie Leocha is president of Travelers United. He has been in Washington, DC for the past 14 years working with Congress, the Department of Transportation and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative on the Aviation Consumer Protection Advisory Committee appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 to 2018.
