THANKSGIVING AND HONEST ABE

In the days before the ACLU, it was not unusual for the leaders of the nation to ask for prayer or to declare the need for giving thanks.

George Washington proclaimed a day of thanks giving on October 3, 1789, his first year as president.

French Ursuline nuns in New Orleans prayed for the success of General Andrew Jackson and his men before the Battle of New Orleans. They won it in a rout on January 8, 1815.

Ursuline Nuns and Old Hickory. Courtesy of WLW-TV, New Orleans.

Zachary Taylor in 1849 called for a day of prayer and fasting due to a horrible cholera epidemic.

People in different parts of the nation celebrated a giving thanks day on different days.

One woman, ladies’ magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, petitioned several presidents to make a national holiday of giving thanks.

Abraham Lincoln thought her idea was a good one.

On October 3, 1863, three months after the Battle of Gettysburg, and a couple of weeks after the Battle of Chickamauga (a Rebel victory in northern Georgia that was almost as bloody a battle as Gettysburg), and 74 years to the day after George Washington’s act, Lincoln made Ms. Hale’s idea his policy.

Here’s Honest Abe’s order.

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.

Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

Honest Abe, 1858. Photo by Byers.

Last Thanksgiving, 99 and I paid a visit to the boyhood home of Zachary Taylor and to the little monument where he and Peggy Taylor are buried, in Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. Why on Thanksgiving? Last year, it fell on November 24, which was also Taylor’s birthday. His mother Sarah gave birth to him in a cabin on a relative’s farm on the Virginia frontier; her husband Col. Richard Taylor and his hired men and slaves had crossed over the Appalachians and spent the winter building cabins in the Louisville area for all of them.

In the spring of 1785, Col. Taylor came back to Virginia for his wife and their children. They crossed the Appalachians and took a flatboat down the Ohio River to Louisville, then a frontier town armed and awaiting American Indian attacks.

Zachary Taylor was Lincoln’s superior officer in the Black Hawk War. Lincoln didn’t serve under Taylor, but met him several times in the course of the conflict. The towering militia captain admired the stocky and rough colonel, who shared the discomforts of his men.

Zachary Taylor, a victorious general in the Mexican War and a slave holder, would come to see slavery was tearing the country apart, so during his brief presidency, he looked for ways to end slavery peaceably.

Ironically, Honest Abe and another younger man, Senator William Seward, had hit on a possible solution. Use federal money to buy the slaves free and set them up as sharecroppers or pioneers or industrial workers. It was an adult solution. Taylor was already trying to add free states to the Union to outvote the South, and he was dead-set against a fugitive slave law being pushed by Democrats and lesser men like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster in his own Whig party. Taylor had already threatened members of Congress with hanging if they were caught in secession and rebellion. He had to send soldiers to New Mexico to keep Texans away, and he had to scuttle two attempts by Southerners to seize Cuba from Spain to make it a slave state. So Lincoln’s and Seward’s ideas looked like a way to avoid civil war.

Sadly it was not to be. Taylor died in office, only 16 months into his tumultuous term. Some say he was poisoned. Democrats and establishment members of his own Whig party celebrated. And they gave secessionists 10 years to organize, something that Taylor would have suppressed.

When Taylor died in office, Honest Abe summed up Old Zack when he gave his eulogy. Lincoln said, “Along our frontier, in summer and winter, in sunshine and storm, like a sleepless sentinel, Zachary Taylor has watched while we have slept for 40 years. The fruits of his labor, his name, his memory and example, have verified the great truth that he who humbles himself shall be exalted.”

Would that all or at least the majority of our public officials could merit such a eulogy.

Margaret and Zachary Taylor

No one could give Abraham Lincoln the eulogy he deserved.

My brother Bryan died a few Februaries ago. At his Requiem Mass, I said the following:

“Bryan loved America and the great patriots. In a way, it is sadly fitting that Bry’s requiem Mass is on Lincoln’s Birthday. When I took Bryan to Gettysburg, he couldn’t get over the fact he was standing on the site of the Gettysburg Address.

Like Lincoln, Bry was a “malice toward none, charity toward all” guy. But few people know Lincoln also was a man of justice as well as mercy. In that same speech, which he gave only six weeks before he was murdered, Lincoln said words like, “We pray that this bloody civil war will end. But if every drop of blood drawn by the slaver’s lash has to be paid for with a drop of blood drawn by bullets or sabers, then we must prostrate ourselves before God and admit His judgment is just.”

No politician comes anywhere near that value system today. In fact, Bry used to say the Ten Commandments were banned from government buildings because the provisos against lying, adultery, perversion, stealing, atheism, and coveting created a hostile work environment for the lawyers, politicians, and bureaucrats.”

Thinking back on Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation, how many of us will give thanks for what we have, and pray for the unfortunates this day? Or give them corporal works of mercy?

I have many things to be thankful for. My life, my faculties, having two wonderful parents who have gone on to their reward. Growing up in a circle of my parents’ families and friends where the adults were good examples and were tough but kind and encouraging. Having good brothers and sisters. Bryan and Lizzie have gone on to their reward. God rest all or their souls.

I have a wonderful wife and a happy home life.

I live in the best nation on Earth.

And I and everyone else who is a worshiper of God have the consolation of Faith, the Church, and much more importantly, the love of God Who is the Creator of all that is good.

For a Thanksgiving prayer, I recommend the 104th Psalm, which follows.

God bless you all, every day, for as long as you shall live.

SHERLOCK JUSTICE

WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.

Courtesy of the U.S. National Council of Catholic Bishops

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