Lincoln Proclaims National Thanksgiving

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Matt Cail and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm here today to tell you all about the history of Thanksgiving. Not all of the presidents that followed George Washington were as supportive of having a national day of Thanksgiving. In fact, some of them were downright disagreeable about it. Thomas Jefferson scoffed at the notion of needing a national day of Thanksgiving and did not issue proclamations to that effect. Because see at this time, it wasn't like Thanksgiving was a holiday that you got your every Thursday and Friday off, no, it was basically, it relied on the presidents to kind of declare it as a national day of Thanksgiving. So Jefferson said no way and actually after 1815, you went about five decades with no Thanksgivings, the 1820s, 30s, 40s and 50s, there were no national days of Thanksgiving. There may have been smaller scale celebrations in towns and cities and individuals but it wasn't like you're getting a day off of work. Abraham Lincoln to the rescue. There was a large write in campaign for, also for decades in these drought decades of Thanksgiving, where people were lobbying the president and other political leaders to declare a national day of Thanksgiving. In1863, Lincoln answered the call. He thought that it might actually help bring the nation more together which was fractured at that time by Civil War over the issue of slavery and a bunch of other issues. He had hoped that a national day of Thanksgiving would kind of help heal some of those fractures so in 1863, he resurrected Thanksgiving and issued a national Proclamation declaring Thanksgiving towards the tail end of that November."