As we all take the day off to be with family and friends, let us also remember to pray for and thank those Americans overseas in dangerous lands who cannot be home for the holiday.
May you all have a wonderful, relaxing day filled with the comfort of friends and family.
Also, please do take some time to look over our past work in the archives her at Publius. In the meantime, God bless you and have a Happy Thanksgiving and see you tomorrow. And we are thankful for your readership.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Our kids have been taught fake news about America’s first Thanksgiving. The Indians didn’t save the Pilgrims. Ending communism did.
It is simply untrue that the Pilgrims were able to celebrate their first Thanksgiving feast because the noble Indians saved them by showing them the ways of America. No, in reality, the Pilgrims were saved because they replaced their original communist system with a capitalist ideal.
William Bradford’s fellows came to the Americas to start a colony that would be a light unto all humanity, one based on a strict adherence to the Christian Bible. They wanted the opportunity to live as they desired, unique, and free from interference from the Church of England, the Crown, or British authorities.
Continue reading “THANKSGIVING: Dumping Communism Saved the Pilgrims, Not the Indians”
During the Civil War, both presidents, Lincoln and Jeff Davis, issued Thanksgiving Day proclamations and celebration of the holiday as we know it grew as a result.
We all know about the famed Pilgrims who feasted with the local Indians in 1621, but after that the holiday was only observed once in a while. When he was the general commanding the American forces during the Revolution, George Washington issued a Thanksgiving proclamation in December of 1777. After the war, in 1789, he did so once again. Then, as President, John Adams also issued proclamations for two of his four years in the highest office of the land. But after that it was more or less a forgotten idea.
It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of a great war, that President Lincoln revived the tradition. The northern president wasn’t the only one to do this during the war, though. President Jefferson Davis had issued his Thanksgiving Day proclamation a year earlier, in 1862. Jefferson’s idea of Thanksgiving was a bit different than the one we think of today. The southern President had declared that the south’s observance would be a day of fasting and reflection, not feasting and revelry.
Of course, the holiday we are familiar with is connected to Lincoln’s proclamation. But, apparently the proclamation was not all Lincoln’s idea. It wasn’t just the war that spurred Lincoln to issue his proclamation, but a letter from a woman named Sarah Hale that convinced him to do so. Hale, the writer of the poem now called “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” had been trying to convince presidents to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation since 1846 and when Lincoln saw her letter he decided to follow her suggestion.
From there our formal national holiday was born.
President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation:
The year that is drawing toward 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 can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
Continue reading “Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation”
By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation, October 3, 1789
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor — and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be — That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks — for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation — for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war — for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed — for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted — for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
Continue reading “George Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation”
Delivered March 6, 1799 by President John Adams
As no truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration, nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of the governing providence of a Supreme Being and of the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributer of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the happiness and rectitude of individuals and to the well-being of communities; as it is also most reasonable in itself that men who are made capable of social acts and relations, who owe their improvements to the social state, and who derive their enjoyments from it, should, as a society, make their acknowledgments of dependence and obligation to Him who hath endowed them with these capacities and elevated them in the scale of existence by these distinctions; as it is likewise a plain dictate of duty and a strong sentiment of nature that in circumstances of great urgency and seasons of imminent danger earnest and particular supplications should be made to Him who is able to defend or to destroy; as, moreover, the most precious interests of the people of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile designs and insidious acts of a foreign nation, as well as by the dissemination among them of those principles, subversive of the foundations of all religious, moral, and social obligations, that have produced incalculable mischief and misery in other countries; and as, in fine, the observance of special seasons for public religious solemnities is happily calculated to avert the evils which we ought to deprecate and to excite to the performance of the duties which we ought to discharge by calling and fixing the attention of the people at large to the momentous truths already recited, by affording opportunity to teach and inculcate them by animating devotion and giving to it the character of a national act:
Continue reading “President John Adams Thanksgiving: A Proclamation Recommending a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer”
We take the rest of the day off to be with family and friends. But, please do take some time to look over our past work in the archives. In the meantime, God bless you and have a Happy Thanksgiving and see you tomorrow. And we are thankful for your readership.
-By Warner Todd Huston
With as Euroized as Democrats and their supporters in our miseducation establishment have become these days, one shouldn’t be surprised to learn that one of the important lessons of Plymouth Colony — popularly known as the Pilgrims — is practically unknown in our schools today. We are all familiar with the bountiful Thanksgiving meal shared between the Pilgrims and the Indians, but less well known is how the Pilgrims turned away from their experiment in the communist-styled social policy upon which they built their fledgling, New World colony.
That’s right, the Pilgrims repudiated communism in 1623. No wonder the principles of communism never got a foothold here until recently when the Democrat Party began to shift away from American principles and toward the more socialistic ideas of Europe’s social democrats.
You see, when the emigres from England via Holland got to the New World and they established their new colony, Governor William Bradford and his fellow leaders decided to follow what they thought was the ideal Christian society. It was a version of the later communist ideal of “from each according to his ability to each according to his need.
It certainly seemed like a good idea, right? The whole of the colony would work for the benefit of the whole of the denizens therein. What could be more selfless? What could be more equitable and, well, Christian?
Continue reading “
Thanksgiving Story: Why There Are No Communist Pilgrims”
We take today off to be with family and friends. But, please do take some time to look over our past work in the archives. In the meantime, God bless you and have a Happy Thanksgiving and see you tomorrow. And we are thankful for your readership.
