Gratitude is a virtue. It is a prized quality because people who are sincerely grateful or thankful are likely more content with life and more appreciative of living. An attitude of gratitude will help us more effectively deal with life’s challenges because we will find the positive in the negative, see the light through the darkness. If we have the trait of gratitude, then by practice or habit we will routinely express our thankfulness to our Maker and to those who teach, touch, and treasure us. Despite hardship and even injustice, those with gratitude in their heart get through the hard times intact by accepting the bad that comes with the good and recognizing that strength and character are developed in the fire of adversity.
In 1863, during the devastation and destruction of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Thanksgiving Proclamation that established the last Thursday of November “as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” Lincoln issued the Proclamation after heeding the pleadings of Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74 year old magazine editor who had spent 15 years begging presidents to adopt a uniform day of thanksgiving across the nation. The first Thanksgiving Day under the Proclamation was celebrated just one week after Lincoln delivered the historic Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. At Gettysburg, a turning point for the American Civil War that took place during three days of brutal fighting in early July of the same year, the Union and Confederate Armies suffered 50,000 causalities, including 8,000 fatalities. Lincoln could have easily ignored the pleadings of “The Mother of the American Thanksgiving” given the dire circumstances of the war. [Learn more about Sara Josepha Hale at http://www.quiltersmuse.com/sarah_josepha_buell_hale.htm.]
If the war was not bad enough for the President, the Lincolns had lost their beloved 11-year-old son, Willie, to tuberculosis the year before. Photographs of Lincoln as the war progressed reveal in the lines and shadows of his face the incredible toll living and leading was having on him. Lincoln, if anyone did, had legitimate reasons to wait to issue the Thanksgiving Proclamation until better times. It is amazing, therefore, that during such a trying period --a time when the United States was divided against itself in a war that threatened the nation and the President was suffering from the weight of the war and family crisis—Lincoln had the strength of character to turn the people’s minds to gratitude. In the Proclamation, Lincoln describes the many blessings received by the people of the nation and then exclaims that “[i]t has seemed to me fit and proper that [the blessings or bounties] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”
We could all benefit from the gratitude expressed by Lincoln even when trials and tribulations surround us. Choose to be happy, even when life is not fair. If you do, you will have a grateful and happy heart. The full text of the Thanksgiving Proclamation follows (a link to the third page of the original is found at the bottom). I hope you will read it and, in doing so, consider the circumstances under which it was issued and ways you can live with more thanksgiving and gratitude in your life.
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| Abraham Lincoln issued the Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1863 amidst manytrials. |
If the war was not bad enough for the President, the Lincolns had lost their beloved 11-year-old son, Willie, to tuberculosis the year before. Photographs of Lincoln as the war progressed reveal in the lines and shadows of his face the incredible toll living and leading was having on him. Lincoln, if anyone did, had legitimate reasons to wait to issue the Thanksgiving Proclamation until better times. It is amazing, therefore, that during such a trying period --a time when the United States was divided against itself in a war that threatened the nation and the President was suffering from the weight of the war and family crisis—Lincoln had the strength of character to turn the people’s minds to gratitude. In the Proclamation, Lincoln describes the many blessings received by the people of the nation and then exclaims that “[i]t has seemed to me fit and proper that [the blessings or bounties] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”
We could all benefit from the gratitude expressed by Lincoln even when trials and tribulations surround us. Choose to be happy, even when life is not fair. If you do, you will have a grateful and happy heart. The full text of the Thanksgiving Proclamation follows (a link to the third page of the original is found at the bottom). I hope you will read it and, in doing so, consider the circumstances under which it was issued and ways you can live with more thanksgiving and gratitude in your life.
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, 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. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward,
Secretary of State
(See this link for a copy of the third page of the original Proclamation: http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/larger-image.html?i=/press/press-releases/images/lincoln-thanksgiving-proclamation-3-l.jpg&c=/press/press-releases/images/lincoln-thanksgiving-proclamation-3.caption.html. )
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