Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 11/21/07 Section: Commentary

Media Credit: Courtesy of Harpers & Bros. This drawing by Thomas Nast helps express the nation's feelings on the first modern Thanksgiving Day in 1863. At center, "Columbia," symbolic of the U.S., lays down her shield and sword to pray at the altar of "Union." Top left and right, the Army and Navy give thanks. Bottom left and right, "Town" and "Country" pray. Top center, General Washington and President Lincoln kneel in prayer. Bottom center, African-Americans pray joyously for their "Emancipation" from slavery. Nast also invented modern images of Santa Claus, the Democratic donkey and Republican elephant. Harper's Weekly, Dec. 5, 1863. See: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/the-civil-war.htm

Essays on Thanksgiving usually wax long upon familiar emotions and feelings, from gratitude to gluttony and greed. However, one often missing, forgotten element began the modern tradition of our holiday: humility.

Yes, we should be thankful for what God has done for us. However, we should also be just as thankful for what God has not done to us.

Let us be thankful that God has not punished us harshly for the sins of greed, pride, sloth and murder committed by our people and government. Let us resolve to better justify God's generosity and mercy.

These, at the least, were the thoughts of Secretary of State William Seward as he wrote the original Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863. Seward, not President Lincoln, wrote the first modern Thanksgiving Proclamation, and signed it in Lincoln's name on Oct. 3.

So much has been written on Lincoln's feelings on slavery that people have forgotten those around him. Seward hated slavery so strongly that his party chose a less emotional man, Lincoln, for the presidency in 1860. Yet he bore no grudge and deftly handled America's relations with the world.

One thing Seward and Lincoln agreed on was that "if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." However, Seward also thought the rivers of blood being spilled in the Civil War expressed God's anger at America for tolerating slavery for 250 years.

God, Seward thought, had chosen to make America a place of penance. Nothing else could explain Union disasters like Chancellorsville and Chickamauga, nor the price of the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

For Seward, the most joyous day in 1863 must have been the first. The Emancipation Proclamation, effective Jan. 1, 1863, declared every African met by Union armies smashing through the South "forever free."

By so doing, the U.S. cause, previously abstract, became blessedly noble, just as Julia Ward Howe had written in "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," with Jesus in her heart and mind:

As he died to make men holy,
Let us die to make men free
While God is marching on!

However, poetry and platitudes alone would save not freedom or the Union.

The great drama was in the East. In May 1863, Southern armies, outnumbered over 2-1, won a shocking victory at Chancellorsville. Pro-slavery men rejoiced that God favored their cause.

Emboldened, Confederate General Robert E. Lee thought he could take Philadelphia and force the Union to make peace on Southern terms. However, three days of fighting at Gettysburg in July so wrecked his army it never again left Virginia.

Thus disaster and deliverance were on Seward's mind as he signed the Thanksgiving Proclamation on Oct. 3.

Moreover, he also realized that although millions of men had been pulled from farms and cities for war, the nation's granaries overflowed, while America's factories poured out torrents of goods, from cannons and bandages to children's toys. This abundance, and mercy, are what he wanted Americans to be thankful for.

However, 1863 would not end until Lincoln gave the U.S. and the world a third reason for victory: democracy. On the field of battle at Gettysburg, hastily set aside as a cemetery for Civil War dead, he declared that they had died so that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

That was Nov. 19. Four days later, Union troops pushed Southerners from the heights above Chattanooga, Tenn., opening Georgia to invasion.

Then Northerners in and out of uniform sat down to eat and pray. Southern soldiers generously refrained from disturbing the rich suppers served on the Yankee lines - featuring turkey and many other meats - though they ate little and had even less for which to be joyful.

Therefore, as you sit down at table this Thursday, wherever you are and whatever you are eating, bow your head and ask what you left undone this year and whose forgiveness you might seek. Let Thanksgiving not only be a national day for gratitude, family, rest and cheer, but also humility and atonement.

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