Lincoln reminds us how to be thankful

Scott Swanson

Notes From The Newsroom

In last week’s issue, an advertiser used an exerpt from President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation that set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving.

I hadn’t given a lot of thought to Lincoln’s executive order for quite a while, though I’d read it in the past. So I decided I’d take a look at it again. Frankly, it’s a good read, one that we would all do well to take a few moments and work our way through. It was written back in the days when people’s natural attention spans were longer than five seconds, but it’s worth the extra effort.

When Lincoln wrote this, the United States was halfway through the Civil War, a conflict between former fellow citizens that took over half a million lives – by far the most of any war before or since. It was a bad time.

Lincoln didn’t forget the horror that was happening on the battlefields, but he focused one some of the good things that the nation had enjoyed from the “ever watchful providence of Almighty God,” whose role in the affairs of men he didn’t doubt, as many seem to do today, judging from the amount of attention our nation pays to Him.

Lincoln saw things to be thankful for, and so should we. Life has been tough for many. Income is down. Folks in our town don’t have jobs; some don’t have homes (see next page). Thankfully, generosity still runs strong, as demonstrated by the bounty gathered by the children at Hawthorne School in their Civil War Food Drive (see page 1).

The advantage of looking back at history is that we can see the outcome. Things didn’t immediately get better for either the North or the South and Lincoln himself met a tragic less than two years later. But the holiday he proposed continued and was finally established as a legal holiday by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on the fourth Thursday of November.

Lincoln’s proclamation, in the midst of what was probably an even more chaotic situation than the mess we find ourselves in now, don’t sound like someone who was simply trying to pacify the masses, as our modern politicians tend to. Rather they sound like words that he truly meant and they are words worth our attention even now, 150 years later:

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 unequaled 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 defense, 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 conciousness 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.

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.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at The New Era.

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