November 23, 2023

Perhaps no year in American history has been more pivotal or historically significant than 1863.  That year, the nation had been torn in half, with the seceded Confederate States remaining embroiled in the midst of the great Civil War.  In the early summer of that year, the nation witnessed the climactic battle of Gettysburg.

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Gettysburg concluded on July 3, 1863, with Robert E. Lee’s tattered Confederate Army of Northern Virginia retreating south, on July 4, Independence Day, after a disastrous military maneuver at Gettysburg that has become known as Pickett’s Charge.

Some military historians refer to Pickett’s Charge as the “high watermark of the Confederacy.”  On July 4, the very day that Lee retreated back into Virginia, his future rival in battle, General Ulysses S. Grant, defeated the Confederate Army at Vicksburg on Independence Day, effectively securing two major victories for the Union Army within a matter of two days and pushing the outmanned Confederates into military desperation.

For military tacticians, historians, and President Lincoln himself, the realization became clear.  After Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg, followed quickly by the fall of Vicksburg, the military tide had turned significantly in favor of the Union.  Lincoln’s dream of reunifying the nation under one flag, as one United States of America, was finally within reach.

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Even so, Lincoln realized that even with the likely defeat of the Confederate Army, the long battle was not yet over, and many more American lives would be lost before the end.

Lincoln, a man who many historians call our greatest president because he presided over the reunification of the nation during its seemingly irreconcilable divide, was also a man of great sobriety.  With nearly 60,000 casualties from both sides suffered at Gettysburg alone, Lincoln realized that the nation’s healing could not come from man alone.

On October 3, 1863, three months to the day after Lee’s disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, Lincoln penned a national proclamation.  In it, he declared and urged Americans to set aside the fourth Thursday of November, from henceforth, as a national day of Thanksgiving.

On the third Thursday of November, November 19, 1863, Lincoln went to Gettysburg and, standing amidst the buried bodies of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers, in a short period of two to three minutes, delivered the most famous political speech in American history.

One week later, on Thursday, November 26, 1863, the nation observed its first Thanksgiving under the presidential proclamation.

Each year since, America has paused, on that fourth Thursday, just as President Lincoln asked that we do, to give thanks.