Though many American presidents have played a role in the tradition of Thanksgiving in the United States, Abraham Lincoln was the first to make it an official holiday in November. This Thanksgiving, we should return to Lincoln’s own words about this holiday, and “thanksgiving” more broadly.
On Oct. 3, 1863, President Lincoln published a proclamation that called for a national day of thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November. In fact, Lincoln’s calls for giving thanks were frequent throughout his presidency, and not just reserved for this time of year. They can help us find the deepest meaning of this national holiday.
The official proclamation, written by William Seward, is specific in its thanks to the almighty. In the span of just one page, it gives thanks for “fruitful fields and healthful skies,” “peace preserved with all nations,” “law and order,” “harmony,” “wealth and strength,” and a growing population. These 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.”
Even amid some of the darkest days of American history, American leaders called on the country to be thankful for their blessings from God—and for the mercy God showed them.
Each of us should consider our own approach to Thanksgiving this year and embrace gratitude not only in a general sense, but for the very specific ways in which we have been blessed over the course of this year.
In addition to calls for gratitude, Lincoln and Seward call on Americans to offer “humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience,” and to ask God to care for widows, orphans, mourners and sufferers.
While these words belong to Seward, the themes are Lincoln’s. The Thanksgiving Proclamation was not the first time that the president had called on Americans to turn toward heaven. In 1861, and on multiple occasions thereafter, Lincoln declared national days of prayer. The first declaration referred to a day of “humiliation, prayer, and fasting.”
This declaration asks Americans “to bow in humble submission to His chastisements, to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to pray with all fervency and contrition for the pardon of their past offenses and for a blessing upon their present and prospective action.”
Lincoln also wrote, “It is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation [the Civil War], and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy.
This theme is central to Lincoln’s thinking. In his private writing as well as in his second inaugural address, Lincoln is concerned with God’s judgment upon the United States as a consequence not only of the individual sins of its people but of the collective wrongdoing—namely, slavery. In the second inaugural, Lincoln wonders aloud whether the Civil War was a punishment for slavery, and refers to a national debt that is owed as a result of “two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil.”
Lincoln recognizes the ways that collective and individual sinfulness harm the country, and calls on Americans to fast and pray both for a change of heart and a change of course.
How can we heed this message today? Fasting on Thanksgiving is unlikely to catch on. But perhaps, in addition to our personal time of reflection on the Thanksgiving holiday, we can reflect not only on our blessings but repent for our shortcomings and find ways to seek reconciliation to God and to our neighbors—and begin to address some of the national and community-level wrongs that plague us.
Lincoln always leaves judgments up to the creator rather than himself. In August of 1863, just months before the Thanksgiving Proclamation, Lincoln called for a separate day of thanksgiving, praise and prayer.
As Elton Trueblood writes in Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership, rather than condemning the Confederates, Lincoln calls for a “change of heart” among the insurgents and asks God “to lead the whole nation through the paths of repentance and submission to the divine will back to the perfect enjoyment of union and fraternal peace.” He places this duty not only upon the South, but the North as well.
The concept of union was always at the top of Lincoln’s mind, and a desire for reconciliation is best revealed in perhaps his most famous utterance outside of the Gettysburg Address:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
In this second inaugural address, as the Civil War was coming to a close, Lincoln’s words flew in the face of popular calls for vengeance and spite. With hundreds of thousands of Americans lost to the war and entire regions of the country destroyed by its impact, Lincoln’s address sought national repentance and called for unity.
As we join with family members this Thanksgiving—or, in many cases, find ourselves unable to gather this year—we should reflect on these words from our 16th president. We have much to be grateful for, and should be specific and thorough in giving thanks where it is due. Individually and collectively, we have much for which we should repent and for which we should seek reconciliation. We, too, should take up the task of binding up the wounds of our country and our countrymen and to care for those most in need.
