What Our Founding Fathers Had to Say About Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving. I hope you and your family have a wonderful day planned together.

When people think about the history of Thanksgiving, they typically picture the Pilgrims at “the first Thanksgiving.” That’s a major part of Thanksgiving’s history, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

Before it was a federal holiday, Thanksgiving was a day appointed by Congress, the President, or the state legislature. Early on in our nation’s history, Congress sometimes appointed more than one “Thanksgiving” in a given year. That’s because these were not meant to be days simply of turkey-feasting. They were, rather, days of prayer. In fact, virtually every early thanksgiving proclamation includes calls to prayer along with fasting, corporate worship, confession of sin, or some similar act.

We have posted several of these proclamations as part of our Words From Our Founders series on our website. Below are excerpts from a few Thanksgiving proclamations issued from 1775 to 1813. I hope they give you an idea of what Thanksgiving was meant to be in this country, and I hope you and your family have a truly happy Thanksgiving!

 

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Thomas Jefferson’s Thanksgiving and Prayer Proclamation

Thanksgiving, Words From Our Founders,

Today we continue our Words From Our Founders series examining America’s Founding Fathers’ words on religion, religious liberty, and morality.

As Thanksgiving approaches, we are featuring various proclamations of prayer and thanksgiving issued by America’s founders. Below is a proclamation issued by Thomas Jefferson on November 11, 1779, when he was governor of Virginia.

Proclamation Appointing a Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer

Whereas the Honourable the General Congress, impressed with a grateful sense of the goodness of Almighty God, in blessing the greater part of this extensive continent with plentiful harvests, crowning our arms with repeated successes, conducting us hitherto safely through the perils with which we have been encompassed and manifesting in multiplied instances his divine care of these infant states, hath thought proper by their act of the 20th day of October last, to recommend to the several states that Thursday the 9th of December next be appointed a day of publick and solemn thanksgiving and prayer, which act is in these words, to wit.

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Words From Our Founders: John Hancock’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

Words From Our Founders,

Today we continue our Words From Our Founders series examining our Founding Fathers’ words on religion, religious liberty, and morality.

Below is a Thanksgiving proclamation issued by John Hancock on October 5, 1791, when he was Governor of Massachusetts. A little-known fact about Hancock: In June, 1775, General Thomas Gage, commander of British forces in Massachusetts at the outset of the American Revolution, issued a proclamation promising to pardon every American who laid down their arms against the British Empire–except two: Samuel Adams and John Hancock. The following year both men signed the Declaration of Independence.

Hancock’s proclamation follows.

In consideration of the many undeserved Blessings conferred upon us by GOD, the Father of all Mercies; it becomes us not only in our private and usual devotion, to express our obligations to Him, as well as our dependence upon Him; but also specially to set a part a Day to be employed for this great and important Purpose:

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