A Civil War Thanksgiving.

In the cause of unity, President Lincoln makes the holiday official

The newsboys on the street cried out the news: General Grant's Union troops had won a smashing victory in Tennessee, and the Rebels were in full retreat! To thankful Northerners, the timing seemed too good to be true. It was November 26, 1863, the day Thanksgiving made its debut as a legal U.S. holiday.

There were no pro football games that day. Americans' attention, North and South, was on the field of battle of the Civil War (1861-1865). But in other ways--turkey and all the trimmings, for example--it was a Thanks giving we could recognize today.

Every schoolchild learns that Thanksgiving dates to the harvest feast Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, had shared with Native Americans in 1621. But few know that it took the Civil War, and a long crusade by a magazine editor named Sarah Josepha Hale, to make the holiday truly national.

Born in New Hampshire in 1788, Hale became a prominent journalist at a time when rigid custom kept most women at home. Widowed at an early age, she turned to writing to support her five children. She wrote the famous nursery rhyme that begins, "Mary had a little lamb ..."

Hale loved Thanksgiving, already a tradition in New England. Her 1827 novel Northwood has a Thanksgiving dinner description you probably shouldn't read if you're hungry:

The roasted turkey took precedence on this occasion, being placed at the head of the table; and well did it become its lordly station, sending forth the rich odor of its savory stuffing, and finely covered with the frost of the basting. At the foot of the board a surloin [sirloin] of beef, flanked on either side by a leg of pork and a joint of mutton, seemed placed as a bastion to defend innumerable bowls of gravy and plates of vegetables disposed in that quarter. A goose and a pair of ducklings occupied side stations on the table.... There was a huge plumb [plum] pudding, custards, and pies of every name and description ever known in Yankee land; yet the pumpkin pie occupied the most distinguished niche.

But however sumptuous, Thanksgiving in the early 19th century wasn't a legal holiday, was still held on different dates in different places, and was ignored altogether in much of the nation. Hale favored adoption of a uniform national holiday, and saw Thanksgiving not only as a day to be grateful for divine blessings, but also as a way to unite the country and promote pride in its freedom, She wrote:

We have ton few holidays. Thanksgiving, like the Fourth of July, should be considered a national festival and observed by all our people ... as an exponent of our republican institutions.

When Hale became editor of a popular women's magazine called Godey's Lady's Book, she used it to press for an official national Thanksgiving. One editorial page asked that

from this year, 1847, henceforth and forever, as long as the Union endures, the last Thursday in November be the day set apart by every State for its annual Thanksgiving.

She wrote such an editorial every year for 16 years, and peppered Presidents with letters pleading her cause.

What finally established Hale's unifying holiday was the war that tore the Union apart. In 1863, by one account, she visited President Abraham Lincoln in the White House. Historians aren't sure about that, but they know her editorial that year called for making Thanksgiving national by presidential proclamation--and that is just what Lincoln promptly did.

Eager to grasp any tool to promote national unity, Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November a day of "thanksgiving and prayer," noting that

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity ... 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.

The holiday brought news of those armies. General Ulysses S. Grant's troops had stormed Tennessee's Missionary Ridge--without having been ordered to do so. In New York City, people cheered the news, then packed into churches to hear Thanksgiving sermons. The New York Times wrote:

Everybody wore a holiday face. In the afternoon all the places of amusement were crowded to overflowing ... The war news so opportunely arriving gave renewed zest to the thankfulness and enjoyment ...

It took another 17 months to end the Civil War and restore the Union. And Congress later moved the holiday to the fourth, not the last, Thursday in November. But Thanksgiving had taken hold, and would be an enduring tradition, North and South.

A Civil War Thanksgiving

FOCUS: A Woman's 36-Year Crusade For a National Thanksgiving Finally Pays Off

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To use a well-known annual occasion as a glimpse into the past, highlighting the moment in the Civil War when Thanksgiving became an official holiday.

Discussion Questions:

* How do holidays contribute to a sense of national unity?

* Why do you believe Sarah Josepha Hale had to struggle so long to win her goal of a national Thanksgiving?

* President Thomas Jefferson disliked Thanksgiving, because he believed it violated the doctrine of the separation of church and state embodied in the Constitution. Respond to Jefferson's concern.

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

Critical Thinking/Writing: U.S. Presidents issue Thanksgiving Proclamations each year. What if students could issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation? Have them write proclamations in which they explain why Americans should be thankful this Thanksgiving.

Sarah Josepha Hale promoted Thanksgiving as a festival "observed by all our people as an exponent of our republican (form of government)." Did Lincoln's proclamation affirm Hale's message, or was it just a tactical maneuver to rejuvenate support for the Union during the Civil War?

Suppose Hale could observe Thanksgiving 2000. Would she approve or disapprove of how the holiday is celebrated? Students should give specific examples.

Debate: Thanksgiving reminds many Native Americans of how Europeans accepted their hospitality before taking their land. Students might debate the question of whether Thanksgiving celebrations should incorporate recognition of the fact that the settling of North America by Europeans deprived native peoples of their land.

Web Watch: For a different view of the first Thanksgiving, written by a Native American school teacher, log on to www .halcyon.com/pub/FWDP/Americas /tchthnks.txt.

For a traditional view of Thanksgiving, the Smithsonian Institution provides background, including George Washington's Proclamation of a one-time Thanksgiving holiday in 1789. www.si.edu /resource/faq.nmah/thanks.htm