We like to think of olden times as simpler times.
They weren’t.
Case in point: America’s first official Thanksgiving (or its second, depending on the counting) was controversial.
It’s history time. You young ’uns, listen up.
The year 1789 was the year that the United States as we know it got started. Yes, yes, there was that whole business in 1776, but the Constitution didn’t set up our current government until 1789. We really ought to be celebrating March 4 in addition to July 4, but I suppose some people like independence more than they do the actual government. Anyway, that spring the first Congress convened, and George Washington was sworn in as our first president.
Things moved at a more languid pace then. For a little more than two weeks, we had a Congress but no president because Washington hadn’t been sworn in yet. Through the spring and summer of 1789, that first Congress went about passing laws to give some shape to this new government. The very first law Congress ever passed dealt with what officials should say when they took their oath of office. Some tariffs and customs laws were passed. The first four Cabinet positions were set up: state, war, treasury, attorney general. The first amendments to the Constitution — today, collectively known as the Bill of Rights — were passed and sent on to the states for ratification. A spending bill was passed, without nearly so much drama as we have nowadays. All the drama was behind the scenes: Alexander Hamilton was arguing with Thomas Jefferson over a financial plan and auditioning for his future Broadway musical career.
Come the end of September, Congress was ready to go home. Before it did so, Rep. Elias Boudinot of New Jersey rose to make a proposal. He wanted to recommend that Washington proclaim a Day of Thanksgiving.
In those days, it was not uncommon to have a Day of Thanksgiving proclaimed. However, these were intermittent, one-off events intended to give thanks for a particular thing — a bountiful harvest, for instance, or a military victory. In 1777, during the American Revolution, the Continental Congress proclaimed a Day of Thanksgiving after the American victory at Saratoga. If you want to be technical, this was our first official Thanksgiving. The one Boudinot was proposing would have been the first under the constitutional government.
Boudinot isn’t a name we recognize now, but he was a big deal at the time. He’d served as an officer under Washington. The Second Continental Congress made him president for a year, a mostly administrative position but one that meant he got to sign the Preliminary Articles of Peace with Great Britain. If cable news had been around then, he wouldn’t have been the first choice for a prime-time talk show guest but would have been fine for another slot if the network needed to fill air time. Boudinot wasn’t given to the snappy phrase the way Jefferson was, but he was regarded as thoughtful and competent. He was also a devout Presbyterian who, later in life, went on to found the American Bible Society and write a book defending Christianity, “The Age of Revelation,” that was intended as a rebuke to Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason.” He’d have gotten some speaking gigs out of that if those days worked like ours.
The Congressional Record of Sept. 26, 1789, writes that “Mr. Boudinot said he could not think of letting the session pass over without offering the opportunity of all the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them.” Specifically, he introduced a resolution to ask Washington to declare “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 Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.”
If Boudinot thought this would be routine, it was not.
Political parties as we know them hadn’t formed yet — but there were factions starting to take shape because, you know, sometimes people disagree. Boudinot tried to avoid them all but is generally remembered in history as being among those who supported the Washington administration, which is what the future Federalists were. Fun fact: Virginia had 10 House members then, but only three were considered administration supporters; seven were in the anti-administration camp of Anti-Federalists, or future Democratic-Republicans, which means poor old George Washington didn’t even have his home state’s delegation behind him. Those three future Federalists were all from the eastern part of the state, so the future Cardinal News coverage area was an anti-Federalist hotbed. Read into that whatever you will.
The anti-Federalists were strongest in the South, and two of them immediately spoke out against Boudinot’s proposal for an officially proclaimed Thanksgiving.
The first was Aedanus Burke of South Carolina. He had grown up in Ireland, and the notion of an official Thanksgiving smacked him as being “European.” He did not mean that as a compliment. The Congressional Record gives this account of what he said: “Mr. Burke did not like this mimicking of European customs, where they made a mere mockery of thanksgivings.”
Thomas Tudor Tucker, another anti-Federalist from South Carolina, spoke next. He had more philosophical objections. He saw a Day of Thanksgiving as inherently religious and, as such, Congress should have nothing to do with it — that whole separation of church and state thing. The Congressional Record paraphrases Tucker telling his fellow House members that a Day of Thanksgiving was “something which does not concern them.”
“Why should the president direct the people to do what, perhaps, they have no mind to do?” Tucker said, according to the Congressional Record. “They may not be inclined to return thanks for a Constitution until they have experienced that it promotes their safety and happiness.” He went on to say: “It is a business which Congress [should] have nothing to do; it is a religious matter and, as such, is proscribed to us.”
Let’s pause here a moment to try to fit all this into the modern day. We can’t. At least not easily. The politics of those days do not match up neatly with our own. We see some outlines that seem familiar: The Northern states generally supported a party that favored a strong central government — that might remind us of our present-day Democrats. The Southern states backed a party that was skeptical of a strong central government — in that sense, the anti-Federalists were our modern-day Republicans.
However, some things don’t carry forward. Here it was one of those Northern, big-government types who wanted a more overt expression of religion in government. It was the Southern conservatives who were most worried about government and religion co-mingling. History is complicated.
The Congressional Record does not say what the vote was, only that the measure “carried in the affirmative.”
Washington took notice of the congressional request and issued the proclamation.
On the appointed day in November, he attended church and sent $25 to a minister in New York, asking him to use the money for “the poor of the Presbyterian churches.”
He also donated food to the imprisoned debtors in New York City, along with one other thing: beer.
If you’re thinking you’d like to be an originalist about Thanksgiving and get in touch with American history, you know what you need to do.
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Thanksgiving was only intermittent until the Civil War
Washington’s Thanksgiving proclamation created one holiday for one year but not a tradition. He issued only one other such proclamation: in 1795, to mark the end of the Whiskey Rebellion. President John Adams declared two Thanksgivings, in 1798 and 1799. President Thomas Jefferson didn’t declare any. Like the two anti-Federalists from South Carolina who opposed the first one, he didn’t think it was a proper thing for government to do. Not until President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War did we get regular Thanksgiving proclamations. Not until 1941 did Congress pass a law fixing a regular date for Thanksgiving. If the anti-Federalists had still been around, they’d probably have been horrified.
The first Thanksgiving proclamation
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. And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best. Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
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