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Finally, someone gets it right.

Too many people (including academicians and historians) wrongfully attribute the Thanksgiving Proclamation to Lincoln.

I collect the Library of America series of American literature. When I received the volume of Washington’s writing, I was bothered that it didn’t include the proclamation.

I wrote to the editors expressing my delay over the omission and they quickly wrote back and very politely informed me that it was not in that volume because Lincoln had issued the proclamation.

I quickly wrote back and politely informed them that they were incorrect, that Washington had originally issued it and Lincoln re-issued it to help bring the country together after the Civil War (and I suppose, at least in part, after Sherman’s despotic and barbaric and divisive march through the South, which he would not have undertaken without approval from the president).

I read Lincoln’s proclamation to the boys in my Trail Life USA troop on Monday.

Sarah Hale, a magazine editor and writer wrote several US Presidents over a 15 year period. All ignored her except Abraham Lincoln.

Mrs. Hale was asking for Thanksgiving to become a national day of remembrance, rather than regional.

Lincoln instructed William Seward to write a proclamation proclaiming the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving.

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

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. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

Mrs. Hale also wrote the children’s poem Mary Had a Little Lamb, was one of the founders of Vassar college and was part of the group that preserved Mt. Vernon for future generations to honor our founding President. Her magazine had 150,000 subscribers. Some o the recipes she published, like roast turkey persist today.

Personally, I like other ways to do turkeys. We had a big potluck with our troop a couple weeks ago. We fried two, smoked one and had two Trash Can Turkeys. (Look it up, they are great.) We’re frying today.