Who Is The Mother Of Thanksgiving?
By Sherri Blevins
Who comes to mind when someone says, Thanksgiving? Anyone
who has been to elementary school probably associates Thanksgiving with
Pilgrims wearing funny-looking hats, Indians offering help, and many things to
eat, including corn, turkey, and pumpkin pie. Teachers tell their students that
Pilgrims and Indians celebrated the first Thanksgiving together after the
Pilgrims’ first harvest in the New World in October 1621.
When and how did this celebration turn into a national
holiday? In 1789, President George Washington
proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving Day in the United States to offer
thanks to God for all things. However, it did not become a
regular holiday in the United States until 1863 when Abraham
Lincoln declared that the last Thursday in November
should be celebrated as Thanksgiving.
What prompted President Lincoln to make
this decision? According to an article written by Barbara Maranzani, entitled How the Mother of Thanksgiving Lobbied
Abraham Lincoln to Proclaim the National Holiday, a lady named Sarah
Josepha Hale is responsible for swaying the president. Maranzani stated that
the author of the children’s poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was persistent in
arguing that establishing the national November holiday could help heal wounds
from the Civil War.
Sarah Hale was a popular writer and editor.
In 1830 she helped to found the American Ladies Magazine, which she used as a
platform to promote women’s issues. In 1837 Godey’s Lady Book, a magazine of
the time offered her the position of editor, which she accepted and prospered
at for forty years, growing the magazine to a circulation of more than 150,000
readers by the eve of the Civil War in 1861.
Her motive for promoting Thanksgiving as a
national holiday originated from her personal experience of regularly
celebrating an annual Thanksgiving holiday. She even published a novel in 1827
called Northwood: A Tale of New England,
which included an entire chapter about the fall tradition which many Americans
already enjoyed. While serving as editor at Godey’s, she often wrote editorials
and articles about the holiday, and she lobbied state and federal officials to
pass legislation creating a fixed, national day of thanks on the last Thursday
of November. According to Maranzani, she believed that such a unifying measure
could help ease growing tensions and divisions between the northern and
southern parts of the country. She saw success. By 1854, more than thirty
states and U.S. Territories had a Thanksgiving celebration on the books, but
Hale’s vision of a national holiday remained unfulfilled.
Hale was not the originator of the idea.
Several leaders, before her, including many presidents, talked of the idea.
During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress issued a proclamation
declaring several days of thanks in honor of military victories.
President George Washington called for a
national day of thanks in 1789 to celebrate both the end of the war and the
ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Presidents Adams and Madison followed
suit issuing similar proclamations, but Thomas Jefferson felt the religious
connotations surrounding the event were out of place in a nation founded on the
separation of church and state, and no formal declarations were issued after
1815.
Maranzani went on to say the outbreak of
war in April of 1861 did little to stop Hale’s efforts to create such a
holiday. She continued her fight by writing editorials on the subject, urging
Americans to put aside sectional feelings and local incidents and rally around
the unifying cause of Thanksgiving. Thankfully, the holiday continued in both
the Confederacy and the Union with Confederate President Davis issuing a
Thanksgiving Day proclamation following Southern victories, and President
Lincoln issuing a call for a day of thanks in April 1862 following Union
victories at Fort Donelson, Fort Henry, and at Shiloh.
Shortly after Lincoln’s summer proclamation
following the Battle of Gettysburg, Hale wrote to both President Lincoln and
Secretary of State William Seward urging them to declare a national
Thanksgiving, stating that only the chief executive had the power to make the
holiday, “permanently, an American custom and institution.”
We may never know if Lincoln was already
predisposed to issue the Thanksgiving Proclamation before receiving Hale’s
letter of September 28, but within a week Seward had drafted Lincoln’s official
proclamation fixing the national observation of Thanksgiving on the final
Thursday in November, a move the two men hoped would help “heal the wounds of
the nation.” Since then, it has been celebrated every year in the United States
with some changes. The day was made an official federal holiday and moved to
the fourth Thursday of November in 1941 by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The next time someone asks, “Who comes to mind when someone says, Thanksgiving?”, you may add Sarah Hale to the list, the so-called “Mother of Thanksgiving.”
Who Is The Mother Of Thanksgiving
