How the Author of Mary Had a Little Lamb & Our Greatest President Created Thanksgiving

In our time of strife, it is comforting—and important—to know that the celebration of Thanksgiving as a national holiday came during our greatest strife. It is no accident that Abraham Lincoln issued his proclamation designating the last Thursday in November as a day of “tranquility, union, and plenty” several months after the Union victory at Gettysburg. During the two days from July 1 to July 3, the casualty total of both sides was near 35,000, the largest such loss of the war.

Lincoln’s Proclamation

The last sentence of Lincoln’s proclamation is, like much late nineteenth-century prose, a bit of a mouthful, but it is worth repeating in its entirety because it captures the many feelings that were coursing through the country at that time. It also offers another important window into a man who, months before, had delivered the nation’s most succinct and eloquent statement of national purpose at Gettysburg.

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, tranquility, and union.

What is less recognized is that much of the agitation that resulted in the proclamation stemmed from a long campaign by the woman who wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Sarah Hale was a widow who had turned to writing to support her family. The poem appeared in her 1830 book, Poems for Our Children, under the title “Mary’s Lamb.” That was three years after her novel Northwood: Life North and South had recommended liberating slaves and sending them back to Africa.

Sarah Hale’s Proposal

The popularity of Hale’s writings led to her being named the editor of Ladies Magazine and then Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most popular publication of its time. Hale was not merely a writer, but also an activist. She founded the Seaman’s Aid Society, created a section on “Employment for Women” for Godey’s, helped found Vassar College, raised money for a Bunker Hill monument, and championed American and women writers. During her time as editor, Hale became a powerful influencer as Godey’s became the supreme arbiter of American taste.

One of her most passionate causes was Thanksgiving. Over two decades, she wrote to five presidents, advocating that Thanksgiving become a national holiday. It was her letter to Abraham Lincoln on September 28^th, 1863, that finally broke the log jam. Over three handwritten pages, she made her case, citing the support her idea had received from governors and generals. She proposed, “A proclamation from the President of the United States would be the best, surest and most fitting method of National appointment.” Her most convincing argument came when she evoked the words Lincoln had spoken at Gettysburg.

Would it not be fitting and patriotic for him to appeal to the Governors of all the States, inviting and commending these to unite in issuing proclamations for the last Thursday in November as the Day of Thanksgiving for the people of each State? Thus, the great Union Festival of America would be established.

She ended her letter with a personal appeal and signed it “editress of the Lady’s Book.”

By the noble example and action of the President of the United States, the permanency and unity of our Great American Festival of Thanksgiving would be forever secured.

Sarah Hale had made her reputation as a writer who could pluck the heartstrings of her readers. In this letter she succeeded in plucking a president’s. Its timing could not have been better. The country sensed that after Gettysburg, the tide of the war had turned, but as Lincoln himself had said on that hallowed ground, there was still much left to do. By establishing a day of thanksgiving, the president was looking to the needs of the present and the future.

Sarah Hale not only earned her title as the “Mother of Thanksgiving” by helping to create the holiday, she also popularized the traditions we associate with it. As early as her novel, Northwood, she celebrated the classic holiday menu with a whole chapter describing the turkey, stuffing, gravy, and pies.

The Spirit of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving would undergo various revisions in the years after Lincoln’s proclamation, especially during the Great Depression, when President Roosevelt and some states celebrated it on different days after pressure from retailers not to schedule it so close to Christmas. It would not be until October 1941 that Congress firmly set the date as the fourth Thursday in November.

Those same retailers and advertisers who convinced FDR to change the date now threaten to make Thanksgiving irrelevant by putting up decorations and starting ad campaigns the day after Halloween. The dawn after we feast on turkey and pie brings Black Friday, now celebrated as an even bigger occasion by corporate America. That day of rip-roaring consumerism has shoppers lining up for blocks and trampling over one another to be the first to grab a bargain. The Grinch didn’t steal Christmas, he IS stealing our national day of thanksgiving. One wonders what Sarah Hale, who above all was about manners, would make of what has happened to her holiday.

It is doubtful Lincoln would have proceeded with the first Thanksgiving without the Union victory at Gettysburg, followed by the retreat of Lee’s army. The Confederate defeat finally made the words of the Declaration of Independence real. An army led by slaveholder generals would ultimately cause over three-quarters of a million casualties to defend the custom of treating other human beings as mere property no better than sheep, cows—or turkeys.

This country had taken a major step towards becoming a more perfect union. Lincoln’s proclamation and, more crucially, Sarah Hale’s letter acknowledged that self-evident truth in their pointed use of the word “union.” What Hale termed a “Union Festival” was not about turkeys and pies. It was about our values as a nation.

When we sit down with your feast on the day of thanksgiving and bow our heads, let us all give thanks for our country and for which it stands. At least for one day, let us push aside visions of sugar plums and remember why we are here. Give thanks for those who gave the last full measure to ensure we remained “one nation, indivisible, with Liberty and justice FOR ALL.” That is what brought Abraham Lincoln and Sarah Hale together. Let it also bring us together.