When Abraham Lincoln wrote his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, he wasn’t thinking about Pilgrims and turkeys; he was thinking about places like the Sunken Road. He established the first official Thanksgiving Day in 1863, a little over a year after what is still the bloodiest day in American history. There were an estimated 23,000 casualties near Sharpsburg, Maryland where the center of battle focused on the Sunken Road, which also became known as Bloody Lane because there were almost 6,000 casualties there in a single morning.
It was called the Sunken Road because it was almost as deep as it was wide, which made it a natural trench for the Confederate soldiers defending it. Three assaults failed to break their line. In a single hour over 1700 men had fallen either dead or wounded. The fourth assault came not long after the sun was straight overhead when troops from the 61st and 64th New York captured a high point on the road turning it into a death trap. The Confederate troops began retreating from the road when they misunderstood an order, leaving it to the Union.
When the battle ended the road lay filled with bodies as the blood of North and South flowed down the trench in scarlet rivulets. Photographer Mathew Brady would later exhibit photographs of the dead in his New York gallery, causing a sensation because it was the first time those on the home front had seen what the New York Times would term “the terrible reality and earnestness of war.”
I originally had posted an image of what became known as Bloody Lane but then thought against it. For those interested in seeing what Antietam was like, the Antietam National Military Site has photographs. It was images like the ones Brady exhibited that kept him awake at night. It was images like the ones Brady exhibited that caused him to write the Thanksgiving Day proclamation. The turkeys and the Pilgrims came later, distorting the meaning Lincoln himself meant to give this holiday, and for some Native Americans distorting American history itself.
Lincoln’s interest in Thanksgiving is said to have been urged on him by Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of the popular Godey’s Lady’s Book, who had promoted the idea in editorials. Hale also did not mention Pilgrims and turkeys. In one editorial she wrote:
Let us consecrate the day to benevolence of action, by sending good gifts to the poor, and doing those deeds of charity that will, for one day, make every American home the place of plenty and of rejoicing. These seasons of refreshing are of inestimable advantage to the popular heart; and if rightly managed, will greatly aid and strengthen public harmony of feeling.
Hale wrote to Lincoln to convince him to set aside a day of Thanksgiving in the midst of the Civil War.
And 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.
While Hale’s letter may have piqued Lincoln’s interest, as with many decisions made by him and by other politicians, it served only as a catalyst that brought forth his own beliefs about what he felt the nation needed, especially after battles like Antietam.
Abraham Lincoln’s personal visit to the battlefield is preserved in a photograph of him standing with some of his commanders, one of whom leans casually by himself off to one side wearing a broad-brimmed hat and gripping his sword. It is George Armstrong Custer. That photograph reminds us that no other American President endured what Lincoln experienced as he sat in his White House office and heard the sounds of the firing squads executing deserters drifting across the Potomac, visited places like the Sunken Road and Gettysburg and read letter after letter from anxious families.
That in the middle of the carnage, Lincoln could find the spiritual strength to pen the third greatest document in American history, the Emancipation Proclamation, and to conceive of that first Thanksgiving testifies to the iron soul of a man who would not break when lesser ones did. So the real first Thanksgiving did not occur at Plymouth, but across America in cities, villages and isolated farms whose families had waited and endured the grim news coming from places like the Sunken Road.
As he often did during that terrible period, Lincoln put words on paper that were spinning in their heads, captured their conflicting feelings and, most of all, read the needs lying in the those guarded places where not even the images of Brady’s photographs could penetrate.
Lincoln knew the nation deserved a day to pause and reflect, to inhale the fresh air of freedom amidst the dark smoke of war. There are so many other things he could have said, so many different words he could have used, so many feelings he could have vented, but he chose to ignore them. Somehow in the midst of visions of places like the Sunken Road he found something positive and enduring, just as he would at Gettysburg.
While his Thanksgiving Proclamation has neither the philosophical profundity nor the rhetorical precision of what he said at Gettysburg it has something else: a faith in what he termed “one heart and voice by the whole American people.” Abraham Lincoln had the ability to foresee a day when all Americans gathered with friends and family to enjoy each others’ company and give simple thanks for their blessings. In Lincoln’s words, Thanksgiving becomes the most American of holidays–even more than the Fourth of July and all the rest–a national day of unity when all the disparate strands of this diverse nation knit together not to celebrate, but to simply be thankful.
That is why we need to remember the Sunken Road on Thanksgiving, as perhaps Lincoln remembered it, for in the midst of such unspeakable slaughter, the President did not call for revenge or hatred, but instead turned us towards what he termed the “better angels of our nature” and called for us to pause, look around and think about our good fortune. His message that first Thanksgiving to the American people speaks more powerfully to this nation than turkeys and Pilgrims.
Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day
October 3, 1863
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 had 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 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.
A. Lincoln
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