Thanksgiving and Ferguson
Thanksgiving is a day in which we eat copious amounts of food with friends and family while giving our (sometimes meager) thanks to the air or God or each other, whichever one prefers. We learn in school growing up that Thanksgiving was initiated by the Pilgrims and we see drawings of people in black cloth hats sitting next to Native Americans in an idyllic circumstance. Because of my parents, who often read the following proclamation at the dinner table before our Thanksgiving meal, I learned that the holiday was set as a national observance because of President Abraham Lincoln.
Most people seem unaware that Thanksgiving was initiated as a national holiday by President Abraham Lincoln following the Civil War in which the North fought the South over the issue of slavery. Thanksgiving had been celebrated on different days throughout the States for years, but it wasn't celebrated uniformly. After the Civil War, the country was in need of a unifying and healing observance. Battered and beaten, with blood still soaking into American soil and an insurmountable task ahead of righting the damage done from 245 years of the evil injustice that was slavery, hope seemed out of reach. Abraham Lincoln wrote a proclamation to remind Americans of the provision of God even in the midst of strife, and, the need to pray.
Slavery was finally abolished two years after this proclamation. Major upheavals like the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, and precipitous events such as we have seen in Ferguson, have all opened up the national consciousness to our continued, deep need for healing when it comes to racial issues. The prayer Abraham Lincoln describes, and the nature of the war, is still applicable today for this Thanksgiving in 2014, 151 years after the proclamation was written. We still need to pray for our "perverse and disobedient" country which has had its (improved since 1863, but still a deep-seated) disease of racism and hatred exposed recently.
Death of anyone, and injustice towards anyone is painful to see and I am certainly not happy Mike Brown died or that Darren Wilson has to live with his actions, whatever the circumstances, but I am relieved that these events have opened up more serious discussions about race in St. Louis. I am relieved to see a more avid desire of St. Louisans to act on each others behalf and to seek change and renewal in this area. St. Louis has had a tumultuous past in regards to racial issues, resulting in a visible "racial divide" and I have been praying for years that God would bring healing. While I still had a car, I frequently drove up the main road named after Dr. Martin Luther King from downtown all the way to highway 170, with the express purpose of seeing, with my own eyes, the obvious disparity on the North side of town. It broke my heart that a major strip of our city, named after an amazing Civil Rights hero and predominately inhabited by the African American people on whose behalf he worked, is a barren and boarded up wasteland. It was my habitual prayer "walk" and I longed to see my Black neighbors living safer and more prosperous lives. These days I live on the North side and take public transportation, so the disparity is a daily, unavoidable part of my consciousness. These events in Ferguson have started discussions that many people are afraid to have and opened up the eyes of our city and the nation to the subtle and overt effects of racism right under our noses. For that, I am thankful.
Who knows; all of those prayers on Thanksgivings long ago and our continued prayers today could be the balm that is working its way into this deep wound. The prayer for "healing the wounds of the nation" and St. Louis, is my continued prayer.
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 unequaled 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 consiousness 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 Unites States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward,
Secretary of State
Most people seem unaware that Thanksgiving was initiated as a national holiday by President Abraham Lincoln following the Civil War in which the North fought the South over the issue of slavery. Thanksgiving had been celebrated on different days throughout the States for years, but it wasn't celebrated uniformly. After the Civil War, the country was in need of a unifying and healing observance. Battered and beaten, with blood still soaking into American soil and an insurmountable task ahead of righting the damage done from 245 years of the evil injustice that was slavery, hope seemed out of reach. Abraham Lincoln wrote a proclamation to remind Americans of the provision of God even in the midst of strife, and, the need to pray.
Slavery was finally abolished two years after this proclamation. Major upheavals like the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, and precipitous events such as we have seen in Ferguson, have all opened up the national consciousness to our continued, deep need for healing when it comes to racial issues. The prayer Abraham Lincoln describes, and the nature of the war, is still applicable today for this Thanksgiving in 2014, 151 years after the proclamation was written. We still need to pray for our "perverse and disobedient" country which has had its (improved since 1863, but still a deep-seated) disease of racism and hatred exposed recently.
Death of anyone, and injustice towards anyone is painful to see and I am certainly not happy Mike Brown died or that Darren Wilson has to live with his actions, whatever the circumstances, but I am relieved that these events have opened up more serious discussions about race in St. Louis. I am relieved to see a more avid desire of St. Louisans to act on each others behalf and to seek change and renewal in this area. St. Louis has had a tumultuous past in regards to racial issues, resulting in a visible "racial divide" and I have been praying for years that God would bring healing. While I still had a car, I frequently drove up the main road named after Dr. Martin Luther King from downtown all the way to highway 170, with the express purpose of seeing, with my own eyes, the obvious disparity on the North side of town. It broke my heart that a major strip of our city, named after an amazing Civil Rights hero and predominately inhabited by the African American people on whose behalf he worked, is a barren and boarded up wasteland. It was my habitual prayer "walk" and I longed to see my Black neighbors living safer and more prosperous lives. These days I live on the North side and take public transportation, so the disparity is a daily, unavoidable part of my consciousness. These events in Ferguson have started discussions that many people are afraid to have and opened up the eyes of our city and the nation to the subtle and overt effects of racism right under our noses. For that, I am thankful.
Who knows; all of those prayers on Thanksgivings long ago and our continued prayers today could be the balm that is working its way into this deep wound. The prayer for "healing the wounds of the nation" and St. Louis, is my continued prayer.
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 unequaled 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 consiousness 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 Unites States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward,
Secretary of State
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