Lincoln and the Civil
War
In the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham
Lincoln, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale,
proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the 26th, the final
Thursday of November 1863. The document, written by Secretary of State William
H. Seward, reads as follows:
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, which 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 had 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 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.
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.--Proclamation of
President Abraham Lincoln, October 3, 1863.
Since 1863, Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the
United States. The holiday superseded Evacuation Day, a de facto national
holiday that had been held on November 25 each year prior to the Civil War and
commemorated the British withdrawal from the United States after the American
Revolution.
Post-Civil War era
During the second half of the 19th century, Thanksgiving
traditions in America varied from region to region. A traditional New England
Thanksgiving, for example, consisted of a raffle held on Thanksgiving Eve (in
which the prizes were mainly geese or turkeys), a shooting match on
Thanksgiving morning (in which turkeys and chickens were used as targets),
church services—and then the traditional feast, which consisted of some
familiar Thanksgiving staples such as turkey and pumpkin pie, and some
not-so-familiar dishes such as pigeon pie. The earliest high school football
rivalries took root in the late 19th century in Massachusetts, stemming from
games played on Thanksgiving; professional football took root as a Thanksgiving
staple during the sport's genesis in the 1890s, and the tradition of
Thanksgiving football both at the high school and professional level continues
to this day. In New York City, people would dress up in fanciful masks and
costumes and roam the streets in merry-making mobs. By the beginning of the
20th century, these mobs had morphed into Ragamuffin parades consisting mostly
of children dressed as "ragamuffins" in costumes of old and
mismatched adult clothes and with deliberately smudged faces, but by the late
1950s the tradition had diminished enough to only exist in its original form in
a few communities around New York, with many of its traditions subsumed into
the Halloween custom of trick-or-treating.
1939 to 1941
Abraham Lincoln's successors as president followed his
example of annually declaring the final Thursday in November to be
Thanksgiving. But in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt broke with this
tradition. November had five Thursdays
that year (instead of the more-common four), Roosevelt declared the fourth
Thursday as Thanksgiving rather than the fifth one. Although many popular
histories state otherwise, he made clear that his plan was to establish the
holiday on the next-to-last Thursday in the month instead of the last one. With
the country still in the midst of The Great Depression, Roosevelt thought an
earlier Thanksgiving would give merchants a longer period to sell goods before
Christmas. Increasing profits and spending during this period, Roosevelt hoped,
would help bring the country out of the Depression. At the time, advertising
goods for Christmas before Thanksgiving was considered inappropriate. Fred
Lazarus, Jr., founder of the Federated Department Stores (later Macy's), is
credited with convincing Roosevelt to push Thanksgiving to a week earlier to
expand the shopping season, and within two years the change passed through
Congress into law.
Republicans decried the change, calling it an affront to the
memory of Lincoln. People began referring to November 30 as the
"Republican Thanksgiving" and November 23 as the "Democratic
Thanksgiving" or "Franksgiving". Regardless of the politics,
many localities had made a tradition of celebrating on the last Thursday, and
many football teams had a tradition of playing their final games of the season
on Thanksgiving; with their schedules set well in advance, they could not
change. Since a presidential declaration of Thanksgiving Day was not legally
binding, Roosevelt's change was widely disregarded. Twenty-three states went
along with Roosevelt's recommendation, 22 did not, and some, like Texas, could
not decide and took both days as government holidays.
In 1940 and 1941, years in which November had four Thursdays;
Roosevelt declared the third one as Thanksgiving. As in 1939, some states went
along with the change while others retained the traditional last-Thursday date.
1942 to present
On October 6, 1941, both houses of the U.S. Congress passed
a joint resolution fixing the traditional last-Thursday date for the holiday
beginning in 1942. However, in December of that year the Senate passed an
amendment to the resolution that split the difference by requiring that
Thanksgiving be observed annually on the fourth Thursday of November, which was
usually the last Thursday and sometimes (two years out of seven, on average)
the next to last. The amendment also
passed the House, and on December 26, 1941, President Roosevelt signed this
bill, for the first time making the date of Thanksgiving a matter of federal
law and fixing the day as the fourth Thursday of November.
For several years some states continued to observe the
last-Thursday date in years with five November Thursdays (the next such year
being 1944), with Texas doing so as late as 1956.
Traditional
celebrations
Charity
The poor are often provided with food at Thanksgiving time.
Most communities have annual food drives that collect non-perishable packaged
and canned foods, and corporations sponsor charitable distributions of staple
foods and Thanksgiving dinners. The
Salvation Army enlists volunteers to serve Thanksgiving dinners to hundreds of
people in different locales. Additionally, pegged to be five days after
Thanksgiving is Giving Tuesday, a celebration of charitable giving.
Foods of the season
U.S. tradition compares the holiday with a meal held in 1621
by the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth Plantation. It is
continued in modern times with the Thanksgiving dinner, traditionally featuring
turkey, playing a central role in the celebration of Thanksgiving.
In the United States, certain kinds of food are
traditionally served at Thanksgiving meals. Turkey, usually roasted and stuffed
(but sometimes deep-fried instead), is typically the featured item on most
Thanksgiving feast tables, so much so that Thanksgiving is also colloquially
known as "Turkey Day." In fact, 45 million turkeys were consumed on
Thanksgiving Day alone in 2015. With 85 percent of Americans partaking in the
meal, that's an estimated 276 million Americans dining on the festive poultry,
spending an expected $1.05 billion on turkeys for Thanksgiving in 2016.
Mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes,
cranberry sauce, and sweet corn, various fall vegetables, squash, Brussels
sprouts and pumpkin pie are among the side dishes commonly associated with
Thanksgiving dinner. Green bean casserole was introduced in 1955 and remains a
favorite. All of these are actually native to the Americas or were introduced
as a new food source to the Europeans when they arrived. Turkey may be an
exception. In his book Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick suggests that the
Pilgrims might already have been familiar with turkey in England, even though
the bird is native to the Americas. The Spaniards had brought domesticated
turkeys back from Central America in the early 17th century, and the birds soon
became popular fare all over Europe, including England, where turkey (as an
alternative to the traditional goose) became a "fixture at English
Christmases". The Pilgrims did not
observe Christmas.
As a result of the size of Thanksgiving dinner, Americans
eat more food on Thanksgiving than on any other day of the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment