Thank you, President Lincoln!

Lincoln Helped Establish Thanksgiving as a National Holiday

Proclamations in support of national days of Thanksgiving dated back to the earliest days of the republic, including one issued by President George Washington in 1789 to celebrate the new U.S. Constitution.

But the practice soon fell out of favor.

In the subsequent decades, several states had their own celebrations, but no national commemoration. A national holiday had long been the dream of writer and magazine editor, Sarah Josepha Hale. The author of the poem, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Hale lobbied for a national day of thanks at the end of November and continued her push even after the outbreak of the Civil War. 

In 1863, she wrote a letter to Lincoln, who had already called for several other days of thanks to commemorate Union victories earlier in the war. Within weeks of receiving Hale’s letter, Secretary of State William Seward drafted a proclamation in the hopes of healing “the nation’s wounds.”

The proclamation also called for a national day of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November to be celebrated annually. That remained the date until 1939, when it was briefly moved to the third Thursday by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, before returning to its current day in 1941.

We have so very much to thank President Lincoln for!

With joy,