Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation

Many posts have discussed the background of Thanksgiving and other holidays.

Transcript for President Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation from October 3, 1863

 The year that is drawing toward 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 even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, 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 theater of military conflict; while that theater 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 defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax 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 battlefield, 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. Theyare 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, tranquility, and union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United Stated 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.

 

Abraham Lincoln

By the President: William H. Seward. Secretary of State

Lincoln 1864

In her statement Thursday night, Liz Cheney mentioned that, before 2020, presidents had always been willing to accept electoral defeat.  She cited the example of Lincoln.

 Abraham Lincoln, Memorandum on Probable Failure of Re-Election1, August 23, 1864

1 A summer of costly military stalemate and widespread disaffection among War Democrats and conservative Republicans with the administration's policies toward slavery persuaded Lincoln that he would probably be defeated in the 1864 presidential election. Perhaps to bear witness to his determination to save the Union even if defeated, he wrote out this memorandum, indicating his fear that General McClellan, if elected, would be forced by members of his party to seek an armistice with the Confederacy. Such an armistice could be tantamount to recognition of Confederate independence. Lincoln's memorandum, which he asked the members of his cabinet to sign as witnesses without reading, amounts to a pledge to work in concert with McClellan before the latter's inauguration.

Executive Mansion

Washington, Aug 23, 1864.

This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.

A. Lincoln

[Endorsed on Reverse:]

• William H Seward
• W. P. Fessenden
• Edwin M Stanton
• Gideon Welles
• Edwd. Bates
• M Blair
• J. P. Usher

August 23. 1864.2

2 The date is in Lincoln's hand.

Christian Nation?

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.

 David French at The Dispatch:

In Lincoln’s second inaugural address, he famously said of the Union and the Confederacy, “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.” That was true most dramatically in the Civil War, but it’s been true in countless conflicts before and since.

In fact, in the present day, it’s still true. As Republicans and Democrats hate each other with increasing ferocity, both parties utterly depend on the two most churchgoing demographics in America to attain and hold power. While Democrats are more secular than Republicans, it’s a rump party without the black vote, and black voters are among the most devout and churchgoing citizens in the United States of America. Republicans of course depend on the white Evangelical vote, and white Evangelicals attend church and believe in the God of the Bible at rates similar to black Protestants.

And what of America’s religious past, the good old days that so many Republican Christians seem to remember and long for? Reality is far more messy. One can make a good argument that white Protestant religious power may well have reached its American apex during Prohibition. A religiously infused temperance movement was so powerful that it succeeded in passing a constitutional amendment essentially imposing morals legislation throughout the United States.

Yet what else was happening in the United States during that era? Well, the entire southern United States (the Bible Belt, by the way) was essentially an apartheid sub-state within the larger United States. It brutally oppressed America’s black citizens, including its black Christian citizens. The Tulsa Race Massacre happened in 1921, at the peak of white Protestant power.

...

Here’s a challenging reality: America has become more just—and thus closer to the ideals one would expect of a Christian nation—as white Protestant power has waned. The United States of 2022 is far more just than it was in 1822 or 1922 or 1952 or even 1982. And while white Protestants have undeniably been part of that story—they were indispensable to the abolitionist movement, for example—the elevation of other voices has made a tremendous difference.

In the civil rights movement, the sad reality is that all too often the person wielding the fire hose and the person facing the spray both proclaimed faith in Jesus and both went to church, but only one of them was acting justly. And any account of American civil rights has to include the vital contribution of the American Jewish community.

Once again, the same theme pops up: “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”

Lawlessness

 Gary Schmitt at AEI:

A recent Washington Post poll has some 34 percent of U.S. adults saying that “violent action” against the government is “sometimes justified.” If more than a third of “adults” are willing to hold such a view, it is not difficult to imagine how an even greater percentage think it is okay to ignore laws and norms that don’t require putting up one’s fists or worse.

In preparation to moderating an event in late December featuring Diana Schaub’s new book, His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation, I re-read the three speeches featured in the volume: the Lyceum Address, the Gettysburg Address, and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. The Lyceum Address, in which Lincoln discusses the challenges of perpetuating America’s governing institutions, is particularly apt for thinking about the meaning of January 6.

Lincoln’s argument, prefiguring the famous line from Pogo that “We have met the enemy and he is us,” was that the danger of sustaining the experiment in American self-government would not be some conquering foreign power, but instead “would spring up amongst us.” “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” Lincoln then goes on to describe several instances of mob violence that he said had been plaguing the whole of the nation.

Lincoln’s answer to this problem is a “reverence for the laws” so deeply held that it becomes “the political religion of the nation.” How deeply? Deeply enough to moderate American individualism and its propensity to resist any restraint. Let it, Lincoln said,

be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.

Needless to say, that is a far cry from the state of U.S. civic education today, in which STEM dominates school curriculums and where the Left emphasizes activism as the key to producing model citizens, while the Right focuses on testing that often only requires a bare minimum of knowledge of U.S. government processes.

The very fact that, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll, two-thirds of Republicans—“the law and order party”—don’t see what happened at the Capitol on January 6 as an attack on the government is remarkable. No less remarkable is the continuing silence from virtually all the Republican leadership in describing the events of that day for what they were. Failing to call the insurrection out for what it was—an assault on the constitutional order itself—and hoping that it will just fade away as a memory implicitly legitimates what occurred then and does next to nothing to head off future mobs from pursuing the same course.

The People Rate the Presidents

 Matthew Smith at YouGov:

The respective excellence of US presidents is always being debated. Many academics have put together rankings over the years to demonstrate who they think is best, and in one famous case the features of one person’s top four have been carved into a mountain.

But how do the leaders of the nation rank in terms of public opinion? A new YouGov poll has asked Americans their view on the 45 men who have served as president to date.

Topping the list is Abraham Lincoln. Eight in ten Americans (80%) have a favorable view of the president who freed the slaves and won the Civil War, including 56% who have a “very favorable” view of him.

In a perhaps surprise second place – if going by combined very+somewhat favorable ratings – is John F. Kennedy, whom 73% of Americans have a favorable view opinion of. This puts him three points ahead of the more traditional runner-up George Washington (70%), who places third on this measure (although the scores are within the margin of error). It is worth noting that fewer people have a “very” favorable view of Kennedy: 35% to Washington’s 44%.

Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson complete the top five, both being seen favorably by 62% of Americans.

...

 There are only two presidents who are currently seen unfavorably by a majority of Americans: Richard Nixon (56%) and Donald Trump (54%). More Americans take a “very” negative view of Trump (47% to Nixon’s 34%), although he is also popular among a wider group: 39% like Donald Trump compared to 27% for Nixon.

Ranking Presidents, 2021

 From C-SPAN

As the nation prepares to celebrate Independence Day, C-SPAN is releasing the results of its fourth Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, in which a cross-section of presidential historians and professional observers of the presidency ranked the country’s 44 former chief executives on 10 characteristics of leadership.

HISTORIANS SURVEY RESULTS CATEGORY

TOTAL SCORES/OVERALL RANKINGS

President	2021 Final Score	Overall Rankings
		2021	2017	2009	2000
Abraham Lincoln	897	1	1	1	1
George Washington	851	2	2	2	3
Franklin D. Roosevelt	841	3	3	3	2
Theodore Roosevelt	785	4	4	4	4
Dwight D. Eisenhower	734	5	5	8	9
Harry S. Truman	713	6	6	5	5
Thomas Jefferson	704	7	7	7	7
John F. Kennedy	699	8	8	6	8
Ronald Reagan	681	9	9	10	11
Barack Obama	664	10	12	NA	NA
Lyndon B. Johnson	654	11	10	11	10
James Monroe	643	12	13	15	14
Woodrow Wilson	617	13	11	9	6
William McKinley	612	14	16	16	15
John Adams	609	15	19	17	16
James Madison	604	16	17	20	18
John Quincy Adams	603	17	21	19	19
James K. Polk	599	18	14	12	12
William J. Clinton	594	19	15	14	21
Ulysses S. Grant	590	20	22	23	33
George H. W. Bush	585	21	20	18	20
Andrew Jackson	568	22	18	13	13
William Howard Taft	543	23	24	24	24
Calvin Coolidge	535	24	26	26	27
Grover Cleveland	523	25	23	21	17
Jimmy Carter	506	26	27	25	22
James A. Garfield	506	27	29	28	29
Gerald R. Ford	498	28	25	22	23
George W. Bush	495	29	33	36	NA
Chester A. Arthur	472	30	35	32	32
Richard M. Nixon	464	31	28	27	26
Benjamin Harrison	462	32	30	30	31
Rutherford B. Hayes	456	33	31	33	25
Martin Van Buren	455	34	34	31	30
Zachary Taylor	449	35	32	29	28
Herbert Hoover	396	36	36	34	34
Warren G. Harding	388	37	40	38	38
Millard Fillmore	378	38	37	37	35
John Tyler	354	39	39	35	36
William Henry Harrison	354	40	38	39	37
Donald J. Trump	312	41	NA	NA	NA
Franklin Pierce	312	42	41	40	39
Andrew Johnson	230	43	42	41	40
James Buchanan	227	44	43	42	41