Thanksgivings were originally English Puritan religious festivals that would be declared for various reasons. New England pilgrims declared them after their arrival in the Americas, the end of a brutal drought, and other major events. Oddly, it’s not certain if the feast declared by governor William Bradford to celebrate Plymouth Colony’s first successful corn harvest was among these recurring Thanksgiving celebrations. However, this feast in which the colonists invited their Native allies, the Wampanoags, led by “Chief“ Massasoit, provided the basis of the story of the United States’ “first” Thanksgiving.
George Washington made the first proclamation of a national day of Thanksgiving on November 26, 1789 to celebrate the successful revolution, particularly the enacting of the Constitution which gave the nation of disparate states a solid political foundation. Several of the following presidents made similar Thanksgiving proclamations, but the tradition faded out after James Madison.
Sarah Josepha Hale
The writer Sarah Josepha Hale and others petitioned for a national Thanksgiving holiday repeatedly starting in 1827. The holiday these White Protestant writers had in mind was more national than religious, and it sought to focus the holiday around the “Woman’s sphere” (cooking, homemaking, crafting, etc.) Many have criticized that it was also a scheme to institutionalize Protestant Anglo-Saxons as the cultural hegemons in the face of rising Catholic immigration, Black emancipation, etc. It didn’t happen until 1863.
During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November as a national day of Thanksgiving. The year began with the Emancipation Proclamation and that July the Battle of Gettysburg dealt both sides enormous losses. The proclamation was actually penned by Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward.
(Partial quote)
“…Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax 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 battlefield, 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.
Right Hand and Life Mask of Abe Lincoln- Leonard Wells Volk, Augustus Saint-Gaudins
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, tranquility, and union.”
Right Hand and Life Mask of Abe Lincoln- Leonard Wells Volk, Augustus Saint-Gaudins
Sources:
Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation- Olivia Waxman, Time.com
Lincoln and Thanksgiving- National Park Service
Thanksgiving 2022- The History Channel
Wills, Anne Blue. Pilgrims and Progress: How Magazines made Thanksgiving. Church History. March 2003 Vol. 72, no. 1. Pp. 138-158. Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4146807