The roots of our Thanksgiving heritage are entwined with the story of the Pilgrims (people who journey to a destination usually because of their religious beliefs) who believed that God was leading them to establish a new community where they could worship freely. As Americans, we celebrate Thanksgiving every year because of the profound faith and uncommon courage of these English men and women. They had no idea how God was going to use them to birth a new nation and to begin an extraordinary experiment in liberty; they knew only that were called to go.
And so, in September of 1620, after enduring many delays and difficulties, these Pilgrims finally boarded the Mayflower, and bravely set sail for the New World. I love the story of their calling, their suffering through great trials, their endurance of hard winters and overwhelming loss, the grace of the Lord which was sufficient to deliver and protect, their dealings with the Indians they encountered there, and especially their lifestyle of praising God for whatever befell them, trusting completely in His providence and goodness toward them.
I love everything about that story. About Squanto and Samoset and Massasoit. About Captain Miles Standish, and William Bradford. All of it. It encourages me every year. But this year, I am recalling a later period of history when President Abraham Lincoln took the threads of that original story and wove it into the fabric of American society. I have included his official proclamation below.
Even though we are a different place in history than we were in 1863 when this proclamation was made, it is still relevant to our times. Specifically, the last sentence he penned that we might today “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.”
The following is Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation taken from the collection of Lincoln’s papers in the Library of America series, Vol II, pp 520-521.
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 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 battlefield, 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. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and 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. ~Abraham Lincoln