Prior to 1863, the country had informally established a day of THANKSGIVING. Its characteristics are familiar to us all – it was about Pilgrims and Turkey dinner and native Americans saving the colonists from starvation.
George Washington affirmed this informal celebration but never established a national holiday. That task was left to Lincoln who issued two declarations first being July 15, 1863, that declared August 6th as the Thanksgiving national day. A second follow-up proclamation came a few months later that changed the date to November.
The story begins on July 1, 1863. A detachment of cavalry led by Captain Clegg of General John Buford’s cavalry was quite surprised to see the advance forces of Robert E. LEE’s infantry marching up Chambersburg Road toward the town of GETTYSBURG.
Very few Americans have a memory of Gettysburg.
Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia were, in the spring of 1863, soundly beating the Union. As summer approached, Lee notched two major battlefield victories, the most recent being Chancellorsville. Stonewall Jackson had thoroughly humiliated the Union forces with his hit-and-run tactics in the Shenandoah Valley. Daily accounts of Union losses and Confederate wins poured into each town with a telegraph- accompanied by the list of husbands, fathers, sons, and grandsons killed in action or wounded into oblivion.
Many, many powerful forces and voices in the north – the newspapers. The copperheads, the Democratic party – all clamoring for a cease-fire, an end to the war, removal of Lincoln, a tolerance for secession.
Union commanders were a chaotic mess. They seemed to actually aid and abet the enemy with tactics and orders that defied any sense of battlefield strategy focused on victory.
As Union Calvary met the Confederate troops on that first day of the battle of Gettysburg, the Union commander, Meade, had only been on the job a very few days, having replaced multiple incompetent and fired predecessors.
Any student of this history will tell you that the world to Lincoln and to his army looked amazingly bleak. Lee had determined to deal a final blow to the Union army and force Washington to sue for peace and allow the Southern slavocracy to go its independent way. As the initial skirmishes ensued, it looked really likely that he would have his wish.
Over the next three days, Lincoln received minute-by-minute telegrams recounting battlefield events. The messages he received were far from encouraging. The South seemed always to have the upper hand. Big round top. Culp’s Hill. The peach orchard. Seminary ridge. The South seemed to outmaneuver the Union forces at will. Victory seemed out of reach; defeat and impeachment seemed far more likely.
But then, I think, Lincoln started to realize that the battle was out of his hands. Whatever he could do, he had done. All he could do was wait.
And pray.
Somewhere in all the mess that was Lincoln’s Presidency, he decided to turn over his fate and the fate of the nation to “the almighty creator”. Win or lose it was now up to God.
He waited.
The anxiety of a type and level no man can know to save a man in his shoes crushed his every thought.
Then word came.
After the famous Picket’s charge bled its way into history, Lincoln received a telegram advising him that the Southern army had broken camp and was marching out of Pennsylvania back to the relative security of Northern Virginia.
Three days of battle – 50,000 casualties, most of whom lay strewn about the Gettysburg landscape, creating the stench of death so powerful that many of the survivors succumbed their consciousness to its overwhelming presence-was over. He could not bring himself to say it was “victory.”
Not yet.
Instead, over the next 11 days, he could find no words save “I give thanks to almighty God,” who saved the country from those who sought to destroy it.
11 days after the final shots were fired, and after finally digesting the fact that at Gettysburg, the fate of the nation was decided and that hope for union, for peace, and for the end of bloodshed was “reasonable,” Lincoln laid his thoughts at the feet of the God he was coming to know and admire.
Eleven days after the final shots were fired, he issued his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation and called upon the nation to join him in their churches, praising God. In prayer. Giving thanks.
That year and every year.
For God, to Lincoln, saved the nation. And the nation should give thanks.
His proclamation establishing a National Day of Prayer was not about Turkey, pilgrims, or Native Americans. It was words of a humble man – horrified by the blood lust and bloodletting of a vicious and vile war – who had turned to God with all humility and said, “You saved us.”
He was now a President who looked at the evil forces trying to destroy America, its Constitution, and its way of life, saw the God who said, “No, not on my watch!”
He was now a President who now looked at a merciful God with praise, and thanksgiving and with a fervent wish that the same God who saved the union would now save it all the more by sending forth His Spirit to change the hearts of those who wished to end the Unites States, destroy it’s Constitution, render helpless its institutions and maintain the evil sin of slavery.
Many folks today look at his proclamation for what it is- it’s not a Presidential order. It’s a Presidential Prayer that recognizes that the evil forces trying to destroy our country can only be overcome by a loving, and caring, and merciful God. And many of those same folks see that his prayer applies just as much today as then.
Today, no reasonable, Constitution-loving American can deny that powerful forces seek to destroy all that America is. They seek to destroy our Constitution our Courts; they want to use the Presidency for immoral, hateful political objectives. They want to enshroud Congress in corruption and treason; they want to destroy the family, the Christian and Jewish faiths that are the cornerstone of our country.
This Thanksgiving, those same America-loving folks will join with the President and thank God for the blessings he has bestowed on our country; and pray that it is his will that our country succeed and that his Holy Spirit enter into our enemies’ hearts and transform them from enemy to friend of our country.
I am one of those folks.
I will read Lincoln’s proclamation to my family, and we will pray with Lincoln. I hope you will join us. Here is the Lincoln prayer/ proclamation he gave:
DAY OF NATIONAL THANKSGIVING
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
It has pleased Almighty God to hearken to the supplications and prayers of an afflicted people, and to vouchsafe to the Army and the Navy of the United States, victories on land and on the sea, so signal and so effective as to furnish reasonable grounds for augmented confidence that the union of these States will be maintained, their Constitution preserved, and their peace and prosperity permanently restored. But, these victories have been accorded, not without sacrifices of life, limb, health and liberty, incurred by brave, loyal and patriotic citizens. Domestic afflictions in every part of the country follows the train of these fearful bereavements. It is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the ALMIGHTY FATHER, and the power of his hand, …
Now, therefore, be it known that I do set apart Thursday, the 6th of August next, to be observed as a day of National Thanksgiving, praise and prayer, and I invite the people of the United States to assemble on that occasion in their customary places of worship and…render homage due to the DIVINE MAJESTY for the wonderful things He has done in the nations behalf, and invoke the influence of His HOLY SPIRIT to subdue the anger which has produced and sustained a needless and cruel rebellion, to change the hearts of tph insurgents, to guide the counsels of the government with wisdom, adequate to so great a national emergency, and to visit with tender care and consolation…all those who…have been brought to suffer in mind, body, and estate, and finally to lead the whole nation, through the paths of repentance and submission to the DIVINE WILL, back to the enjoyment of union and fraternal peace.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at Washington, this 15th day of July, in the year of our lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
God bless!
