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Lincoln proclaims a day of Thanksgiving — in the middle of the Civil War

Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln

As I wrote in 2023 for Thanksgiving last year, just six weeks after the horrible murderous massacre of innocent people by Hamas on October 7, 2023:

The date was October 3, 1863. The Civil War was at its height, with no end in sight and no clear sign yet of victory for the Union. For all anyone knew, the great American experiment in self-government, freedom, and constitutional law was about to end in failure, with one half of the nation committed to the idea that it was okay to enslave other human beings, based on their race.

In such a moment, President Abraham Lincoln did what all past leaders in America had done, call for a day of prayer to God for the future while giving thanks for the blessings still abounding. For this purpose he set aside the last Thursday of November of that year.

Since then, Americans have never stopped celebrating Thanksgiving on that day. Today comes another Thanksgiving during a time of chaos, hate, violence, and oppression. There is much to invoke horror and outrage.

There is much more to be thankful for. As much as some have tried to squelch freedom here in America and abroad, all signs say that freedom-lovers everywhere are refusing to go down without a fight. Let us join together to renew that effort, so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Thanksgiving continues to be an utterly American holiday. No other nation has anything like it. And it lives on, because deep down, all ordinary Americans — from all walks of life and political persuasions — are still hopeful and determined to build a life for themselves and their loved ones, with joy and justice and freedom at its heart.

Thus, the words of Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation still rings true to us all. Let us put aside our petty factional differences and, as Lincoln asked, give thanks as “one heart and one voice by the whole American People.”
—————————–
A Proclamation.

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, that 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 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.

The first Thanksgiving by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris
The first Thanksgiving by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris

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, tranquillity 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.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward, Secretary of State

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

16 comments

  • wayne

    A Day Of Thanksgiving (1951)
    Young America Films
    https://youtu.be/HocXg3soHZM
    12:20

    “An American family who cannot afford a turkey for
    Thanksgiving contemplates the things for which they are
    grateful.”

    “…an unusual mental-hygiene film in that it does not equate freedom & happiness in post WW-2 America,
    with wealth and consumerism.”

    A Centron Films production, made in Lawrence, Kansas with non-professional actors.

  • James Street

    Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

    Lincoln could give a speech. The right man for the right time in history.

    This is Rush Limbaugh’s famous Thanksgiving video where he focuses mainly on the Pilgrims trying communism and failing, then switching to capitalism and succeeding.

    “Rush Limbaugh – THE TRUE STORY OF THANKSGIVING”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAyvTCaoFA0
    (25 minutes)

    Every Thanksgiving AM radio talk show host Michael Medved played a fascinating pre-recorded 3 hour history of Thanksgiving where he focused on the history of the Pilgrims and their Plymouth colony. Here is the first hour. I believe the other 2 parts are also on YouTube.

    (Michael Medved, who is Jewish, talks a lot about amazing coincidences at critical moments in America’s history that he refers to as “God’s Hand on America”.)

    “1987 Part 1 of 3 The Real Story Behind Thanksgiving”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da_XnHGYsME
    (38 minutes)

  • Allan

    Thanks, Wayne.
    Wholesomeness squared. Makes Leave it to Beaver look radical.
    I wonder what kind of car that is dad Johnson is repairing.

  • Jay

    Canada does thanksgiving.
    Like everything in Canada it is being adulterated and destroyed with wokeness and the destruction of Canadian culture.
    Officially since 1879 but pretty similar though.

  • wayne

    James–
    Thanks for those links.

    Allan–
    Excellent characterization. This is one of the better guidance-type films I’ve come across
    Not a car-guy myself, but this was made & released in October of 1951, so whatever they had in Kansas at the time.

    Interestingly, Bill’s employer, “Pipperts Automotive” was totally a real thing.

    https://ferriswheelantiques.com/products/vintage-1948-hastings-casite-gas-oil-advertising-pocket-notebooks-lawrence-ks-auto-parts

  • wayne

    didn’t want to make Mr. Z. work too hard today…

    “Bill Johnson,” – played by (uncredited) Dan Palmquist.

    Dan Palmquist (11-6-23 to April 1981)
    https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0658633/?ref_=tt_cst_t_1

    “Dan Palmquist was in the drama department at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas in 1951 when he went to Centron Films in Lawrence to play the parts of George Johnson and Bill Johnson in two films: “Speech: The Function of Gestures” and “A Day of Thanksgiving”. By 1955, Dan was head of the Centron editing department and also directed quite a few science and safety films for the company. He was with Centron until his death.”
    Editor on 21 films, including such greats as “The Microscope and Its Use,” and Director of 6, including “Safety on the School Bus,” and “What About School Spirit?”

  • Allan

    Wayne–
    Well, that explains something, the Centron production has embedded marketing, a sponsorship !
    That’s okay, Some good old fashioned capitalism at work fits with the theme. Grateful for free enterprise.

  • wayne

    Allan-
    Look up ‘sponsored films,’ and ‘ephemeral films.’
    Generally defined as “sponsored-rhetoric, a film made by a particular sponsor for a specific purpose other than as a work of Art;” advertising, educational, industrial films, social-guidance, and government sponsored films. (loosely, “propaganda.”)

    Going way tangential– you might enjoy:

    “To New Horizons” (1940)
    A Jam Handy Production by General Motors
    https://youtu.be/aIu6DTbYnog
    (23:00)

    “A World with a Future in which all of us are tremendously interested, because that is where we are going to spend the rest of our lives.”

    “Definitive document of pre-World War II futuristic utopian thinking, as envisioned by General Motors. Documents the “Futurama” exhibit in GM’s “Highways and Horizons” pavilion at the World’s Fair, which looks ahead to the “wonder world of 1960.”

  • wayne: In the film business we called these films “industrials.”

  • wayne

    here we go…

    “Technicolor For Industrial Films” (1949)
    Sponsored by Technicolor
    https://archive.org/details/Technico1949

    “We don’t make industrial films, we make the things that make industrial films, better.”

  • Jeff

    Allan wrote: “I wonder what kind of car that is dad Johnson is repairing.”

    Studebaker. Dead give away is the rounded, pointed hood with trim. I am not up on makes and models, just did a search on “1951 Studebaker sedan”. They had several models in various trim packages. Found this that matches pretty close. Hood ornament has the vertical fin like the one he was polishing in the film.

    https://cdn1.mecum.com/auctions/ca0814/ca0814-190054/images/ca0814-190054_1@2x.jpg?1406583101000

    (and I like the license plate…)

  • ” . . . with one half of the nation committed to the idea that it was okay to enslave other human beings, based on their race.”

    Huh. Maybe not so much has changed. Now, though, the Oppressors are happy to enserf others under the banner of ‘Inclusion’. Yeah, I’d rather be excluded.

    Wayne:

    Reminds me of the BATF commercials. Paraphrased ‘We don’t make the things, we make the things better.’

    Happy Thanksgiving. I’d rather be here, than anywhere else. And we can all be thankful for BtB.

  • mkent

    ”Reminds me of the BATF commercials. Paraphrased ‘We don’t make the things, we make the things better.’”

    That would be BASF. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms does not make many things better these days.

  • wayne

    Jeff–
    excellent detective work!

    Blair/mkent-
    Good stuff.
    For the record, Technicolor did not use that catch-phrase, I just thought it fit exactly.

    As for BASF–
    Well, they have a VERY checkered past— something to do with the mass-production of sodium cyanide used to kill millions of people.

  • Related:

    2025 WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE TREASON?

    “The Democrat party, not the American people who identify as Democrats, committed treason over the last 4 years. And that fact is plain to me. The Democrat party after being taken over by the more radical elements of the very most Leftist elite among them have committed treason. And I would have to include in that class of Americans the RINO’s who refused to stand firmly against them, they too have committed a form of treason. In my opinion anyway.”

    https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/2025-what-to-do-about-the-treason

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