Lincoln, in a conversation with Secretary of State William Seward, suggested that a president “had as good a right to thank God as a Governor,” agreeing with Seward that the entire country ought to share the same Thanksgiving Day. By the time of Lincoln’s presidency, the holiday was often declared by Northern state governors for dates scattered throughout November and early December, making it something of an impromptu, regional custom. 3, 1863, issued a proclamation of Thanksgiving to “set apart” the final Thursday in November. George Washington declared the first national Thanksgiving in 1789, but it didn’t take. It was in the wake of those nine relentless, eventful months that Lincoln, on Oct. Shortly thereafter, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, a controversial wartime measure. In August, Lincoln met with Frederick Douglass at the White House, an encounter often cited as a milestone on Lincoln’s path toward putting his political weight behind the 13 th Amendment to abolish slavery. The spring and summer brought Gettysburg and Vicksburg-important Union victories with a steep human cost. 1, when his Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, freeing all slaves in Confederate-held territory. The year 1863 had presented Lincoln with constant military, political, and moral battles, beginning on Jan. Together, they represent the sacrifice and presence required to maintain our experiment in democracy. Thanksgiving Day was to become our most revered secular holiday. The Gettysburg Address gave us the clarity of viewing our democratic government as a sacred institution of the people, by the people, for the people.
Over just a few weeks, Lincoln offered two markedly different presidential declarations that forever changed this nation: his Gettysburg Address and the proclamation of a Thanksgiving holiday. Is the Green Man British Enough for the Royal Coronation?Īs he looked out over the Potomac in the autumn of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln must have been thinking about the tens of thousands of soldiers who, like the maple leaves along the river’s bank, had forever fallen to temper the American soil.Īgainst the backdrop of a wildly tumultuous year in American history, Lincoln took it upon himself to transform the language of American civic religion and mythology. Why Does the Right-Wing Scion of a Failed European Dynasty Want to Tell Us How to Live? “Originalist” Arguments Against Gun Control Get U.S. The Bridgerton Prequel Helps Clarify the Show’s Relationship With Race-Except for, Uh, That One Character
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