In honor of the holiday, we bring you the text of Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation from 1863, which established it as a national holiday. 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.
Thanksgiving was first celebrated by the settlers at Plymouth in the Massachusetts colony in 1621 under the leadership of Gov. William Bradford. Washington and Madison each issued a Thanksgiving proclamation once during their presidencies. It was not until 1863, however, when Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation that the holiday was established as a national annual event, occurring on the last Thursday of November.
You remember Abraham Lincoln's famous Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863. You know, the one where he said that, despite the ravages of the Civil War, we should be grateful for those killer sales that soon will usher in a glorious holiday shopping season and kick- start the lagging economy. That isn't exactly what he said, of course. It's just a modern interpretation.
Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1863, even in the midst of the Civil War, urged the country to count blessings and to remember whether by accident of birth or acquired citizenship that one is so fortunate to call the United States home. Surely one of the blessings we all share is the opportunity to be of service to our community and our country. Through the Council on International Relations and the State Department's International Visitor Leadership Program, we can do this as citizen diplomats; a concept that the individual has the right -- or responsibility -- to help shape foreign relations "one handshake at a time.
The first "Official" Thanksgiving in the United States of America was celebrated in 1863. President Lincoln, by proclamation, declared a day of Thanksgiving in the middle of the Civil War. The original proclamation is in fact dated Oct. 3, 1863. Just a few months before, on July 1-3, 1863, the Union and Confederate armies had clashed at Gettysburg, Pa. During those three days 3,155 Union soldiers were killed and between 2,600 and 4,500 Confederate soldiers were killed. But they were all Americans. The total of the killed, wounded and missing during those three days for the Union side was 23,040. The Confederate estimate is between 20,650 and 25,000.
George Washington was the first president to proclaim a national day of thanksgiving. The most famous proclamation was Abraham Lincoln's in 1863, "in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity. Lincoln established an annual day of national thanksgiving, and what he was thankful for that fall was that the Civil War was not as terrible as it could have been: "... 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."
Before Thanksgiving became the day before the biggest shopping day of the year, it was a day to give thanks to God. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation that firmly established Thanksgiving as an annual national holiday in 1863. Although the Civil War was still raging, he called on Americans to remember the blessings in life. They are the grateful gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy," Lincoln wrote.
The very essence of Thanksgiving - no, it's not your grandmother's cornbread stuffing - is perhaps best reflected in the words of the man who first designated the holiday to commence on the last Thursday in November. Here's what Abraham Lincoln said Oct. 3, 1863, in his Thanksgiving proclamation: It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.
Today is a holiday. So we will give that editorial part of ourselves that is never satisfied -- that voice that views with alarm, thunders for action or fairly oozes with disappointment, that personality that comes down out of the hills after the battle to shoot the wounded -- the day off. Instead, we will do this day, Thanksgiving Day, the honor of taking it seriously. But not passively. Because it is the function of this space to call for something, even on holidays. We will commend your attention to the virtues of thankfulness, of gratitude, even of acceptance, as a foundation for a well-lived life. el,3 2 * * *
...-- Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation of Thanksgiving, 1863. * * *. As easy as it is to ...
... has been an annual tradition since 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a natio..., Mass., was June 29, 1671, by a proclamation by the town`s governing council.Later in the 18th ...
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