Seward wrote the proclamation that read in part: President Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day in 1863, to be celebrated on November 26 - the final Thursday of the month. The holiday would remain inconsistent for decades. It read in part: “Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of thee States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” In 1789, New Jersey congressman Elias Boudinot proposed that the House and Senate jointly ask President Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for “the many signal favors of Almighty God.” Washington then created the first U.S. The Continental-Confederation Congress, the legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, issued several “national days of prayer, humiliation, and thanksgiving.” This would eventually manifest itself in the established American observances of Thanksgiving and the National Day of Prayer today. George Washington, leader of the revolutionary forces, proclaimed a Thanksgiving in December 1777 as a victory celebration honoring the defeat of the British at Saratoga. The feast was cooked by the four adult Pilgrim women who survived their first winter in the New World, along with young daughters and other servants.ĭuring the war, the Continental Congress appointed one or more thanksgiving days each year, each time recommending to the executives of the various states the observance of these days in their states. The gathering included 50 people who were on the Mayflower (all who remained of the 100 who had landed) and 90 Native Americans. They celebrated at Plymouth for three days after their first harvest in 1621. It wasn’t until a decade later that the Plymouth settlers, known as Pilgrims, arrived in the New World. Thanksgivings also took place in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607, with the first permanent settlement of Jamestown holding a Thanksgiving in 1610. With animal rights activists standing nearby, the president quipped that "this fine tom turkey…will not end up on anyone's dinner table, not this guy-he's granted a presidential pardon as of right now." The rest, as they say, is history.This story doesn’t necessarily start with Pilgrims.Įvidence shows that Spanish explorers and settlers held thanksgiving services during the late 1500s in what is now Florida and New Mexico. In 1989, following this tradition, the first official turkey "pardon" was granted by George H.W. It continued under the administrations of Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan. It was intended, perhaps, as a peace offering by the poultry industry after egg growers sent crates of live chickens to the White House labeled "Hens for Harry," an act of protest against the president's short-lived encouragement of "poultry-less Thursdays." And though the Truman Library & Museum disputes that he was the first to "pardon" a presidential turkey, a murky tradition of presidents receiving-but not eating-turkeys began. Truman who became the first to receive one from the Poultry and Egg National Board and the National Turkey Federation in 1947. presidents receiving turkeys as gifts can be traced back to the 1870s, but it was Harry S. Bush's presidential "pardon" of a turkey was a joke of sorts.
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