Our Views: Lincoln helped create holiday

Thanks to “Lincoln,” Steven Spielberg’s new movie about America’s 16th president, Americans are getting a big reminder about Abraham Lincoln’s contributions to our national life.

This week’s observance of Thanksgiving should be an occasion to remember Lincoln’s role in creating that national holiday.

For years before Lincoln took office, magazine editor Sarah J. Hale had campaigned to establish Thanksgiving as a regular, nationally observed holiday. Inspired by the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving feast, Americans had observed various days of gratitude over the years, but the holiday hadn’t been declared an annual national event.

Lincoln finally obliged Hale’s request, issuing a proclamation on Oct. 3, 1863, establishing the observance of a national Thanksgiving Day in November. The Civil War was raging, but despite of — or perhaps because of — the nation’s troubles, Lincoln believed that a national day of gratitude was in order.

Here is how Lincoln opened his official proclamation establishing Thanksgiving Day:

“The year that is drawing to a close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful yields 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 the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.”

Lincoln then urged citizens to join in a common spirit of gratitude. His words seem just as timely this week, as Americans observe a holiday that Lincoln helped to advance.

Comments

1) Comment by prbeav - 22/11/2012

Jdk944, thank you for those quotes. I wish we could talk to Lincoln about his opinions.>>>>I am especially intrigued by his April 4, 1864 addition to a record of a political conversation: "I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it.">>>>Lincoln seems to have blamed God for the Civil War. Perhaps he blamed the warring parties with their arbitrary, contrary uses of the God construct and one of its branches, the Bible.>>>>Perhaps Lincoln's God was whatever might make Lincoln spectacular in the world's political opinion.

2) Comment by CountryBoysCanSurvive - 21/11/2012

oops Contrary

3) Comment by CountryBoysCanSurvive - 21/11/2012

The headlines read "Lincoln doing well in theaters, despite evidence to the quandary !

4) Comment by bourbon-soda - 21/11/2012

FWIW, it used to be that television & movies were derived from written works; now, writing is derived from mostly disneyfied television and movies. This was also on the History Channel, I think it was, last night.

5) Comment by jdk944 - 21/11/2012

While you are at it, why don't you acknowledge Lincoln's belief in God!! "That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular." --July 31, 1846 I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. -July 31, 1846 Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty. --March 4, 1861 First Inaugural Address TO MANY TODAY "scoff" at God and thus we have this country/world in the shape it's in. Something YOU should ponder!!