The search for the right sentiments for Thanksgiving has been pursued by every president since Lincoln. Ever since, presidential proclamations have praised God for the blessings of the day, but they also illustrate that each Thanksgiving day is different, as well as part of a continuing tradition.
Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863 took note of the challenges of “a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity.”
Yet in the midst of war, Lincoln proclaimed, “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 theater of military conflict. ”¦ Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship.”
More than a half-century later, while America was still at peace just before World War I, Woodrow Wilson lamented that “the whole face of the world has been darkened by war. In the midst of our peace and happiness, our thoughts dwell with painful disquiet upon the struggles and sufferings of the nations at war and of the peoples upon whom war has brought disaster without choice or possibility of escape on their part. We cannot think of our own happiness without thinking also of their pitiful distress.”
In 1929, Herbert Hoover was still oblivious to the Great Depression that had already begun, commenting: “The fruits of industry have been of unexampled quantity and value. Both capital and labor have enjoyed an exceptional prosperity.”
Four years later, his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt acknowledged the hard times, which he thought were ending. “May we be grateful for the passing of dark days; for the new spirit of dependence one on another; for the closer unity of all parts of our wide land; for the greater friendship between employers and those who toil; for a clearer knowledge by all nations that we seek no conquests .”
But the spirit of Thanksgiving was expressed most keenly in 1945, when Harry S. Truman spoke of the end of World War II and the victories over Germany and Japan. “We have won them with the courage and the blood of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We have won them by the sweat and ingenuity of our workers, farmers, engineers, and industrialists. We have won them with the devotion of our women and children. We have bought them with the treasure of our rich land. ”¦ In unity we found our first weapon, for without it, both here and abroad, we were doomed. None have known this better than our very gallant dead, none better than their comrade, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Our thanksgiving has the humility of our deep mourning for them, our vast gratitude to them.”
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