Thanksgiving Sea to Shining Sea 4

Thanksgiving: Sea to Shining Sea, continued

During the Civil War, governors had not hesitated to use their Thanksgiving proclamations to show their advocacy for the Union or the Confederacy. Illinois Governor Richard Yates' 1864 proclamation stated:

”Let us praise Him that He has crowned our armies with victory, and pray our Heavenly Father that He will shield our soldiers in all their perils, lighten their sufferings on the march, in hospital and in battle – and console the hearts of their bereaved families at home – and that He may deliver our country from her enemies, and so direct the administration of our national affairs as to give all the blessings of permanent prosperity and lasting peace to our nation.”

It is no surprise that, after the war ended, a divided country found no unity in the new national holiday.

Perceived – and now hated - as a “Yankee holiday,” Thanksgiving provoked strong feelings of resentment among many southerners. The Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation issued by Andrew Johnson in 1868 expressed a wistful and modest wish:

“We are permitted to hope that long-protracted political and sectional dissensions are at no distant day to give place to returning harmony and fraternal affection throughout the Republic.”

It took many years to restore harmony and fraternal affection. Thanksgiving only gradually regained its popularity in the South. The original prewar national recognition of the Thanksgiving holiday was largely due to the influence of Sarah Josepha Hale and her widely-read Godey’s Lady’s Book. Domestic magazines, which proliferated greatly in the 1870s and 1880s, played a similar role after the Civil War. Often published in the Northeast and fond of featuring Thanksgiving menus and decorations as a theme for November, these new "lady's magazines" gradually softened the feelings of Southern women.

1882 North Carolina Proclamation by Governor Thomas J. Jarvis

It was not until 1897 and a threat of international conflict, a threat which developed the next year into the Spanish American War, that President William McKinley was able to proclaim that

“Respect for law and order has been strengthened, love of free institutions cherished, and all sections of our beloved country brought into closer bonds of fraternal regard and generous cooperation.”

Thanksgiving became once again a true national holiday.