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Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation
A sober reflection, not a gay celebration
Today we are celebrating Thanksgiving here in the United States. This is a national holiday, and has been since Abraham Lincoln. It has become a holiday replete with traditions such as the large meal depicted by Norman Rockwell in the iconic image above and the football game that many Americans watch after stuffing themselves full of food.
However, a day of gay celebration was not the holiday that Lincoln envisioned when he declared the holiday in the middle of the Civil War, which started in 1861 when the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter.
A major victory was won by Union forces at Gettysburg in July, 1863. While there were over 50,000 casualties, this victory motivated President Lincoln to issue a proclamation on October 3rd of that year.
In his Thanksgiving Proclamation, he states:
I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, …to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving… And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him …, 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…
