On Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation inviting citizens of the United States to "set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." His act established Thanksgiving as a national event to be celebrated the last Thursday of each November.
Thanksgiving that year was celebrated on Nov. 26, one week after Lincoln's trip to a small Pennsylvania town, where he memorialized the fallen in one of the Civil War's most critical and devastating battles. With bodies still lying unburied in the fields behind him, Lincoln asked the nation to "highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom."
And with those spare words, Lincoln rewrote America's political lineage. He traced the nation's birth to the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, instead of the Constitution, which allowed slavery to exist.
Enjoy your Thanksgiven be safe on your travels too and back.
God Bless E.M.A.W
Thanksgiving that year was celebrated on Nov. 26, one week after Lincoln's trip to a small Pennsylvania town, where he memorialized the fallen in one of the Civil War's most critical and devastating battles. With bodies still lying unburied in the fields behind him, Lincoln asked the nation to "highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom."
And with those spare words, Lincoln rewrote America's political lineage. He traced the nation's birth to the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, instead of the Constitution, which allowed slavery to exist.
Enjoy your Thanksgiven be safe on your travels too and back.
God Bless E.M.A.W
