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).
delay = dismay
We drove yesterday from north of Milwaukee to Kansas City, KS, listening to Sirius radio almost the whole way. While we listened to one of our favorite Miwaukee talk shows in the morning, w were please to listen to Charlie Sykes read both the Washington and the Lincoln proclamations and to note that Thanksgiving is the ONLY religious holiday which is also a civic holiday by Proclamation, making it unique among holidays.
If I read this right, though, this was one thanksgiving. Typical in the old days. They could be any time and frequent or not, for one particular readon. Not an annual, periodic event. Also, there is no reference to pilgrims.
I believe Lincoln declared it permanently on an annual basis at a set time. Perhaps I remember wrong.
Point is, tg’s were very common in the old days, meant to thank God publicly for various favors at any given time.