How Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation, issued during the Civil War, reminds us to be grateful even in the bleakest times.
Should one be grateful in the midst of turmoil, civil unrest, or even an apparent reckoning? Although St. Paul affirms, “[i]n all circumstances, give thanks,” Americans — and some Europeans — wrestled with this inherent Christian principle during the throes of the Civil War.
President Abraham Lincoln inadvertently sparked this controversial struggle when issuing the Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 3, 1863, which established the “last Thursday of November next” as an occasion to offer “Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
Drafted by Secretary of State William Seward, the president called for unity, urging his countrymen to recall the “gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.” Ultimately, the effort tried to “summon the entire nation to prayer,” as David S. Reynolds writes in Abraham Lincoln In His Times.
For some, however, the well-intentioned sentiment was met with curiosity and even hostility, and not merely from Confederate states.
Still, thanksgiving proclamations akin to Lincoln’s had been commonplace. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress issued a similar proclamation after the Battle of Saratoga (1777), asking that God “smile upon us in the Prosecution of a just and necessary War, for the Defense and Establishment of our unalienable Rights and Liberties.” New England states had recognized the holiday since the early republic, and presidents like George Washington declared their own iterations, albeit irregularly. Even Confederate president Jefferson Davis declared days of “fasting and humiliation” and thanksgiving to “protect and defend” the Southern cause, pleading that God “may set at naught the efforts of our enemies.”
As opposed to Davis, Lincoln — who had a complicated relationship with faith prior to the war — invoked prayer and religiosity not so much for military success as for reconciliation. His proclamation delved into themes he later expanded upon in the Second Inaugural Address (1865): that Americans offer “humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience,” charity toward the mourners of soldiers who died in the war, while imploring God to “heal the wounds of a 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.”
Coupled with the release of the Emancipation Proclamation earlier that year, Lincoln’s thanksgiving message bore considerable moral gravity in the war’s shifting aims from merely preserving the Union to also ending slavery. Consequently, dissension arose due to its “progressive” leanings and “historical association with Puritan-related reforms such as abolitionism,” according to Reynolds. Indeed, Lincoln had been convinced to issue the proclamation after being personally implored by Sarah Josepha Hale, a New England resident who persistently campaigned for Thanksgiving to be recognized as a national holiday.
Unsurprisingly, Union newspapers mostly applauded the proclamation. The New York Times called it “most admirable”; The Daily Illinois State Journal posited it would “no doubt, be universally accepted”; and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle expressed the hope that the proclamation would establish “an annual rule, and that hereafter we may have every year the august spectacle of a National Thanksgiving Day.” Even Western outlets, such as the Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, praised Lincoln for having the “true idea” because “he gives thanks and prays” while also “call[ing] for 300,000 more troops and keep[ing] to work on the iron-clads.”
However, the proclamation was not universally acclaimed. Southerners suggested Lincoln had, once again, superseded state’s rights since governors typically called for days of thanksgiving. As The Macon Telegraph wrote:
“The darling scheme of the Lincolnites is to obliterate the States—to silence them as organs and mediums of communication with the people, and it is a stroke of policy, if possible, to disconnect the popular mind with all State associates, in the matter even of holidays. A grand national Thanksgiving is hereafter to supersede the State Thanksgivings. To get rid of the States in every possible attribute of government is an absorbing idea with the Lincoln administration.”
Even Northerners took umbrage. It was “caviled or snarled at” among the anti-war Northern Democrat ‘Copperheads.’ Meanwhile, outlets like The Richmond Jeffersonian (Richmond, Ind.) and The Star of the North (Bloomsburg, Pa.) criticized the proclamation’s insistence that the nation’s “laws have been respected and obeyed,” proffering that Lincoln removed the writ of habeas corpus and imposed martial law. As for offering thanksgiving, the latter emphasized that while “[t]here is much, very much, in our condition to thank God for,” the nation has “so sinfully opposed his merciful dispensations” throughout the war. A proper penitential response, therefore, would be to instead “prostrate ourselves before Him in sackcloth and ashes,” evoking scenes in the Old Testament.
Perhaps the most prominent criticism lobbed against Lincoln’s call for a day of thanksgiving came not from an American newspaper, but The London Times. The English outlet railed against the proclamation, charging it was issued with a “singular bad taste” and reeked of blasphemy, stating:
“Thanksgiving for what? For civil war, the very greatest of calamities; for the destruction by rude hands of a Constitution which has been regarded as a masterpiece of human wisdom; for the loss of liberty; for the death or mutilation of hundreds of thousands of human beings; for the increase of a spirit of exasperation and hatred; for the devastation of large territories; for the substitution of paper credit for regular and lucrative industry, and for the tenfold miseries which the war has hitherto inflicted on the black race as well as on the white — these are the things for which President Lincoln would have to thank Providence if the Day of Thanksgiving had been fixed on the 3rd of October. For what blessings will he have to return thanks on the thanks of the 26th of November?”
When Thanksgiving Day arrived on November 26th, there was cause for celebration in the North. The day before, the Union scored a major victory at the Battle of Chattanooga — or Missionary Ridge — led by General Ulysses S. Grant. The victory was consequential, “open[ing] up the Deep South for a Union invasion and set the stage for Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign the following spring,” according to American Battlefield Trust.
From New York to Boston to Philadelphia to Chicago, the day was “religiously kept” with businesses ceasing operations, while churches were “thronged in the forenoon by the devout” — and citizens and civic associations engaged in charitable activities such as feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, as the New York Tribune reported.
In promoting religiosity and charity, the proclamation was moderately successful — although it is “not generally listed among Lincoln’s great achievements, and with good reason” due to Seward’s authorship, as historian Ted Widmer argued in a 2019 column in The Washington Post. Nevertheless, unlike previous Thanksgiving proclamations, Lincoln’s 1863 declaration is a significant milestone in American history since it established an unbroken precedent, laying the foundation for what would become an official national holiday nearly a century later, in 1941.
As Thanksgiving 2025 approaches, the nation again is wrestling with rampant polarization. Most Americans disagree on “basic facts”; nearly two-thirds believe the country’s political culture is incapable of solving problems; and about a third believe violence “may be necessary to set the country on track.”
These are precarious times — and one could resign themselves to believing the problems are insurmountable. Indeed, one could adapt the Times editorial for modern audiences.
This year, however, presents an opportunity to recall the 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation and the impetus which prompted its issuance: that even in the bleakest times, God has not abandoned us. To him, we owe our gratitude for our very existence — and the free will he has freely given. Inculcating this fundamental truth remains vital if we are ever to bind our wounds — especially as families and friends gather around tables increasingly hostile due to opposing political views.
After all, “a house divided cannot stand,” as Lincoln famously declared in the antebellum years. It is, therefore, imperative to seek mercy and reconciliation, while renewing our efforts toward fraternity, charity, and, indeed, love of neighbor. But first, we must ask ourselves — even in these difficult times, what should we be thankful for? The truth is: everything, and in all circumstances.
