Why Thanksgiving: The origin from 1863

Thanks to the Dispatch, I share this meaningful excerpt. We think of Thanksgiving as starting with the "Pilgrims and Indians" but the way we do it, and when started during the Civil War, in fact deep in the middle of it, right after Gettysburg, and the country started being thankful then. How unlike us! Read on:

The Thanksgiving tradition in the Americas dates back nearly 500 years, of course, but it wasn’t observed nationally every year until 1863, when—prompted by a letter from writer and editor Sarah Josepha Hale—President Abraham Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving proclamation reportedly written by his Secretary of State, William Seward. 

“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies,” it reads. “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.”