The True Tale of Thanksgiving It is always remarkable to me how little we know of our own history and why we celebrate the holidays that we do. Somehow, we have stepped into a world in which all things have lost their meaning and our true history and origins are lost. Today, many of us will stuff ourselves full of food. We will think that we are celebrating a secular holiday that is somehow supposed to be loosely about being thankful and about family. Yes, we were all raised on tales of pilgrims and native Americans. We watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Sadly, we turn it into a day of football. And, then we rush out to shop on Black Friday the next day. What I am about to tell you is the true tale of Thanksgiving. To understand it, we must turn the clock back to 1858. That year, a gawky depressive man by the name of Abraham Lincoln challenged an Illinois powerhouse named Stephen A. Douglas for a seat in the United States Senate. He shocked even the broad-minded people of Illinois by quoting from the Declaration of Independence constantly during his debates with Douglas. Lincoln had the temerity to tell voters that slavery was an abomination. It was not a message that went down well with the voters and Lincoln was defeated. Two years later, the tiny Republican Party nominated Lincoln to be its candidate for president of the United States. Nobody expected Lincoln to win. No Republican had ever been elected president. But, that year the Democrats had a split in their party - and Lincoln became president almost by default, only because the Democrats couldnt get their act together. Suddenly, the man who had shocked the nation by coming out against slavery and been spanked for it by the voters of Illinois had somehow slipped into the White House. The American south was appalled and disgusted and angry. Slowly, one by one, the southern states succeeded from the union. Imagine it. Lincoln never thought he would actually be president. And, now he was. And, his nation was falling apart. European nations seriously contemplated attacking the United States. Chances were that the United States wouldnt last through the war that was to come. But, Lincoln prayed. He watched as one general after another tried and failed to beat the Confederacy. Their generals were smarter and better trained. But, more importantly, their morale was better. The south was fighting for something. They were fighting for their tradition. They were fighting for the right of individual states to resist what they saw as a federal government grown too powerful. The north had nothing like that. And, we were losing the war. Lincoln became more and more depressed. He began to pray more and more. Finally, Lincoln had had enough. He knew that if he was going to preside over the crumbling of his nation, he may as well do Gods will and the will of the Founding Fathers, as he saw it in the Declaration of Independence, which boldly stated that all men are created equal. Lincoln worried that God was angry with this nation for allowing slavery. He knew that our nation needed to do humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience. On January 1, 1863 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in the south. Suddenly, the war turned around. Rather than losing every battle, now the United States was winning every battle. On October 3, Lincoln proclaimed our first Thanksgiving. In the proclamation, he thanked God for allowing the United States to survive. The very next month, the two sides met at the decisive battle at Gettysburg. Now, the northern soldiers were fighting for something. They were fighting for freedom! They were fighting for the original vision of the Founding Fathers! They were now fighting as ferociously and tenaciously as the Confederates ever had. They won that decisive battle. Once the battle was over, Lincoln told that nation on Nov. 19, 1863 that: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Exactly one week later, we would celebrate our nations first Thanksgiving. As you sit down at your table and enjoy your turkey, I hope you will take a moment to think about what Thanksgiving was really all about. Washington, D.C. October 3, 1863 By the President of the United States of America. 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 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 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 consiousness 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, 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 Unites States the Eighty-eighth. By the President: Abraham Lincoln
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 06:48:00 +0000
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