It's Friday, Nov. 25, the day of the week when I pass along quotations intended to be uplifting or thought-provoking. Today's words come from an extraordinary New Englander named Sarah Josepha Hale, 19th century woman of letters who relentlessly championed the idea that Thanksgiving Day should be a national holiday.
Hale is little remembered today, which is a shame and an injustice. "Northwood," her 1827 anti-slavery novel, was published 15 years before "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Hale was instrumental in gathering support for building the Bunker Hill Monument -- and in preserving Mount Vernon. She edited women's magazines and wrote children's rhymes (including "Mary Had a Little Lamb.") She was, in a word, a dynamo.
Thanksgiving is an idea we associate with George Washington, who did indeed issue the first presidential proclamation for a day of thanks and prayer. And American schoolchildren are still taught heart-warming (if sanitized) tales about Native Americans and European pilgrims feasting together in peace. In today's cultural environment, such stories can trigger a backlash among Americans sensitive to the true effects of colonization.
Although it's good to keep such concerns in mind, the provenance of Thanksgiving includes a historical narrative that should warm progressive hearts, and cause us to praise not just Sarah Josepha Hale, but Abraham Lincoln as well.
Before the Civil War, Thanksgiving was designated by the states, if it was designated at all, not by the federal government. You could say the day almost came with statehood. Sam Houston, president of the Republic of Texas, proclaimed it a holiday in 1842. California did so in 1849, a year before it joined the Union.
But by the early 1850s, some Southerners, notably in Virginia, couldn't help but notice that preachers in the North used Thanksgiving as a basis for anti-slavery sermons. In "Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience," author Melanie Kirkpatrick noted that slaveholding Virginia Gov. Henry Wise complained about churches preaching "Christian politics" (i.e. abolition) and he vowed to resist "this theatrical claptrap of Thanksgiving." Kirkpatrick, incidentally, calls Sarah Josepha Hale the "godmother" of Thanksgiving.
Initially, Hale saw the day as an idea that transcended politics. In an 1835 book of essays, in a chapter called "Thanksgiving of the Heart," she wrote, "There is a deep moral influence in these periodical seasons of rejoicing in which a whole community participates."
But it eventually became apparent, and not just to abolitionists like Sarah Hale, that "the whole community" couldn't participate in these prayers and feasts of gratitude. Enslaved people, for example. Moreover, it became clear to anyone but the most deliberately obtuse Americans that thanking God for one's blessings while simultaneously denying freedom and happiness to others was not only incongruous, but theologically grotesque.
As the nation hurled toward what Frederick Douglass termed "the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake," Hale believed -- naively, it must be said -- that a genuine commitment to Thanksgiving Day might forestall war. It did not, but when war came, Sarah Hale redoubled her efforts, writing directly to President Lincoln and beseeching him to make it a federal day of remembrance. Lincoln complied, meaning that our two greatest presidents saw the need for just such a day.
After the Civil War, the irrepressible Hale hoped Thanksgiving would help the healing. Later, she wrote, "The idea was very near to my heart, for I believe that this celebration would be a bond of union throughout the country, as well as a source of happiness in the homes of the people."
And that is our quote of the week.
