Mrs. Hostetler's Computer Lab: Friday Fun Fact Nov 6

Thank You, Thanksgiving!

image from Aurit Mediation

The year was 1863. The United States was in the middle of the Civil War, and the Northern States and the Southern States were deeply divided.

Sarah Josepha Hale was a magazine editor and writer at the time. She wrote "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and many other items, but she also wrote letters. Lots and lots of letters!

Sarah wrote letters to governors, senators, politicians and presidents, and those letters were about this: let's make Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Many people in the United States already celebrated Thanksgiving. George Washington had requested a day of prayer and thanksgiving in 1789 to show gratitude for the successful end of the War of Independence from England.

New York proclaimed a Thanksgiving holiday in 1817 for its state. Other Northern states did the same, but each celebrated it on a separate day. The Southern states were unfamiliar with the tradition because the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims occurred in the northern part of the United States.

Sarah Hale wanted to have Thanksgiving declared a national holiday - a holiday shared on the same day by ALL of the states. She wrote so many letters and worked so hard for this idea that she became known as the "Mother of Thanksgiving".

Sarah wrote to Abraham Lincoln, and they both agreed that the Northern states and the Southern states needed something to bring them together, at least for one day. So in 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday. He asked all Americans to thank God and to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” *

Lincoln scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday of November, and we have been celebrating this holiday in November ever since.