If You Think This Thanksgiving Was Bad, Remember 1863
With poverty rates in the United States hitting a fifteen-year high, the level of unemployment refusing to fall under 9.5 percent, and the greatest wealth disparity between rich and poor since the Great Depression, many Americans may have trouble finding what exactly it is they are thankful for this Thanksgiving. To make matters worse, the 4 percent of Americans who will be braving the airports this season to visit loved ones will be forced to make the not-so-ideal choice between full-body imaging scanners or uncomfortably intrusive pat-downs. But although this Thanksgiving holiday may seem rather bleak to many in the United States, Americans should take some time (perhaps while TSA personnel are snapping x-ray images of your naked body) to think back to the terrible conditions surrounding this country’s first Thanksgiving. Not the traditional Thanksgiving of 1621 that American society has held in collective memory—one of the only times Native Americans and colonists met without mass bloodshed, in celebration of the harvest in Plymouth Rock. Rather, in these difficult times, Americans should remember that when President Lincoln first established this national holiday in 1863, the Union and the Confederacy were still fighting the bloodiest war in American history.
Chancellorsville. Vicksburg. Gettysburg. Chickamauga. Chattanooga. The New York riots. Gettysburg alone produced nearly 50,000 casualties on both sides. Those three days saw more casualties than any other battle during the Civil War, which raged on for two more years. During the war brothers slaughtered brothers, tens of thousands of families were torn apart, and millions remained in chains. Having witnessed an unimaginable amount of bloodshed between Americans and realizing the desperation and pain felt by so many affected by this war, President Abraham Lincoln issued a national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation on October 3, 1863. He asked that in the wake of a “civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity,” Americans give thanks and praise to God and ask forgiveness for our “national perverseness and disobedience…[and] commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife…” President Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national annual event to be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. On November 19 of that year, Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address during the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. One week later, the nation observed the annual Thanksgiving holiday for the first time.
From that year forward, Thanksgiving has been observed on the last Thursday of November. The only break in that tradition was from 1939 to 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the holiday to the third Thursday of the month in order to increase spending and holiday sales. However, “Franksgiving” was faced with great opposition from Republicans who saw it as an affront to Lincoln’s memory. Amidst political turmoil surrounding the issue, Roosevelt grudgingly signed a bill in 1941 making Thanksgiving an official federal holiday.
So, you’re angry that you are out of a job while CEOs enjoy the view floating gracefully over the American masses in golden parachutes. Americans have the right to be upset and cynical this holiday season. But it could be, and certainly has been, worse. Just remember that the war that forced President Lincoln to write the Thanksgiving Day Proclamation left over 600,000 American soldiers dead and entire regions of this country devastated. In 1863, blacks in the South were still held in chains, while they still faced open discrimination in the north while children of all races toiled in factories. This country was split in two and experienced the most violence in its history. Americans have a lot to be upset about this year, but even more to be thankful for. In a world filled with despair, we should give thanks for all that we have been blessed with and perhaps we can just GIVE to the “widows, orphans, mourners, [and] sufferers” of the world this Thanksgiving.