On Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation inviting citizens of the United States to "set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." His act established Thanksgiving as a national event to be celebrated the last Thursday of each November.
Thanksgiving that year was celebrated on Nov. 26, one week after Lincoln's trip to a small Pennsylvania town, where he memorialized the fallen in one of the Civil War's climactic battles. With bodies still lying unburied in the fields behind him, Lincoln asked the nation to "highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom."
Despite our polarizing differences in our nation today, as it was back then, on this day of thanks, we should look to our families and pray thanks that we have each other.
Please keep our troops, who cannot be with their families this Thanksgiving, in your thoughts!
Happy Thanksgiving, Patriots!!!
