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.
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