Holiday of hope
It’s easy, while enjoying family traditions associated with Thursday’s holiday, to lose sight of its national purpose.
The first Thanksgiving was issued by presidential proclamation in 1789 by George Washington, but it was only for that year. There was no nationwide, uniform custom of Thanksgiving until Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863, which established an annual observance date on the last Thursday in November.
Like Washington before him, Lincoln presented American liberty as a blessing warranting prayerful gratitude during the darkest moments of schism, strife and uncertainty.
As contemplative dessert for yesterday’s feast, here are annotations to Lincoln’s words.
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.
Lincoln begins not with the war and its bloodiness, but with the harvest, which many states already celebrated with feasts. He also establishes God’s sovereignty early on.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled 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.
Secretary of State William Seward had been successful at preventing foreign nations from interfering in our domestic dispute, a critical Union objective.
Warfare in 1863 was still limited, primarily, to the battlefield. The optimism following recent victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg is reflected in the reference to positive troop movements.
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 has 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.
Lincoln itemizes the nation’s gains, despite devastating human casualties, as wartime demand ramped up already rapid industrialization. Mechanization in agriculture in the north, such as the new threshing machine, was vital in maintaining output in the absence of able-bodied men called to military service.
The 1860 census reported a 34 percent growth in the nation’s population since 1850, heavily tilted to northern states and their fast-expanding cities.
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. Lincoln steadfastly credits God.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.
In the most divisive of times, Lincoln stresses unity in giving thanks.
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.
The president remembers Americans outside our borders, and again explicitly names the Heavenly Father as the benefactor of all blessings.
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, tranquility and Union.
The poetic phrasing here—remarkable for its beauty, benevolence and restorative tone—has been described as more like a prayer than an official document.
As Washington did 74 years earlier, Lincoln declares a national duty to acknowledge God’s hand. He also lifts up the indirect victims of the war, and casts a vision for a return to a whole and wholly healed nation.
Things today are not as divisive as the 24/7 news media hype suggests. Even if they were, the Thanksgiving holiday is a hope-inspiring reminder of our longstanding and successful national instinct to unite around gratitude to God.
And no, TGIBF isn’t what that means.