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Message Subject: The first Official Thanksgiving.

walleye express

Posted 11/23/2011 9:10 AM (#101480)
Subject: The first Official Thanksgiving.

Member

Posts: 2680

Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay.

Many of you probably learned that the very first Thanksgiving was with the pilgrims and the Indians. And then adopted as a national Holiday many, many years later. I actually thought Franklin D. Roosevelt was the one who introduced Thanksgiving. But a post on my fishing board this morning in our "Ask the Pastor" section of the board, by our real pastor resident member cleared things up for me.

I read it with interest as the timing of this act struck me as almost un-thinkable. Imagine a Man's complete faith and total trust in Gods divine hand that he would declare a national day of thank's during this country worst and bloodiest War. Not a war with a foreign enemy bent on our destruction, but brothers killing brothers in much the same senseless way that Cain slew Able. It also tells me of the character of the man and the people living back then and how much we have changed. But I know if this man is not in heaven folks, we don't have a prayer of getting there.

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

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

Edited by walleye express 11/23/2011 9:14 AM

walleye express

Posted 11/23/2011 1:07 PM (#101482 - in reply to #101480)
Subject: RE: The first Official Thanksgiving.

Member

Posts: 2680

Location: Essexville, MI./Saginaw Bay.

Oppps. Seems I was right. Our pastor member just posted this.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well Dan, as usual, your "steel-trap" mind has retained something that you probably heard many moons ago.
The modern Thanksgiving holiday is traced back to that famous event with both Pilgrims and Indians present in 1621. And it was Roosevelt who made the 4th Thursday of November Thanksgiving Day as a matter of Federal law in 1941 - after considerable false starts and hiccups.
If you'd like an interesting read on the whole subject, check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)
You'll discover that, like everything else they touch, Congress couldn't come to a decision on this without wrangling over the details.
And it shouldn't come as a surprise, either, that for a time Thanksgiving was actually held on the 3rd Thursday of November in order to expand the official shopping season before Christmas!

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