Thanksgiving

Due to an awesome Sunday School lesson, I came home and looked something up. Sister Ingram taught today and ended with this thought. That Thanksgiving Day was to be a day of humility and repentance. School children hear the version of the pilgrims and Indians, but do we teach our kids that Lincoln wanted to help promote faith and thanks toward our Heavenly Father. Lincoln saw it as a way to unify the States in the midst of civil war. As a side note it was Sarah J. Hale who petitioned 5 presidents to have a national day set aside for this purpose

I don't know if this is the source she used or not, but I did think it was interesting and pertinant.

Part of President Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation
....They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.