JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

The Thanksgiving holiday is universally and almost unilaterally

associated with the pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts who

in 1621 set aside a day to give thanks for their first harvest in their

new home.

But one of the great ironies in our history is that Thanksgiving was

made a national holiday in the midst of the terrible fratricide of the

American Civil War. The holiday we celebrate today came about more than

200 years after the pilgrims’ day of thanksgiving, during a period of

national testing eerily comparable to our situation today.

In July of 1863, Abraham Lincoln was able to rejoice for the first

time in many months as a result of two signal military victories. In the

east, Lee had been turned away at Gettysburg and was in retreat to the

Potomac River. And in the west, the Confederates defending Vicksburg had

surrendered to Grant. In gratitude -- and in hope that despite the

refusal of Union generals to attack and destroy a retreating Lee the war

might be ending -- Lincoln issued a document titled “Proclamation for

Thanksgiving by the President of the United States of America.” He didn’t

intend it to mark a recurring holiday but only a national giving of

thanks for these signs that the killing might soon stop.

His proclamation underscored one enormous difference between then and

now: the eloquence of national leadership. Here is part of Lincoln’s

message that accompanied his first call for national thanksgiving: “It

has pleased Almighty God to hearken to the supplications and prayers of

an afflicted people and to vouchsafe victories on the land and on the sea

so effective as to furnish reasonable grounds for augmented confidence

that the union of these States will be maintained, their Constitution

preserved, and their peace and prosperity permanently restored.

“Now, therefore, be it known that I set apart Thursday, the 6th day of

August next, to be observed as a day for national thanksgiving, praise

and prayer, and I invite the people of the United States to assemble on

that occasion in their customary place of worship and in the forms

approved by their own conscience render the homage due to the Divine

Majesty . . . to subdue the anger which has produced and so long

sustained a needless and cruel rebellion, to change hearts of the

insurgents, to guide the counsels of the government with wisdom adequate

to so great a national emergency and to visit with tender care and

consolation all those who . . . have been brought to suffer in mind, body

or estate.”

Three days after this first call for thanksgiving, the worst riots in

the history of New York City erupted over a new military draft law that

allowed men who were conscripted to buy their way out of service for

$300. Under the rallying cry of “The Poor Man’s Blood for the Rich Man’s

Money,” the rioters finally had to be put down by troops recalled from

battle lines. Meanwhile, the Confederates reformed their forces in

Virginia, and the war -- even more bloody -- continued for a lost cause.

Nevertheless, President Lincoln in October of 1863 found the heart and

the hope to make his vision of Thanksgiving Day permanent. Over the

signature of A. Lincoln came the pronouncement: “I invite my fellow

citizens in every part of the United States . . . to set apart and

observe the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving and praise

to our benificent Father.”

And so Thanksgiving Day was born and so we celebrate it today in

another time of national crisis.

Several points in Lincoln’s proclamation seem to be worth underscoring

today. Although under severe attack at the time for constricting civil

rights, Lincoln’s stressing the preservation of the Constitution in his

Thanksgiving proclamation was not out of line with his firm conviction

that he was empowered to suspend habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or

invasion and that he was “anxious to favor a return to the normal course

of the administration as far as regard for the public welfare will allow”

-- an affirmation that would be welcome today.

Lincoln’s invitation to Americans to assemble “in their customary

place of worship and in the forms approved by their own conscience”

represents a sense of religious and philosophical thinking that is

inclusive rather than exclusive. He once answered a kindly letter from a

group of Quakers this way: “It seems to me that if there be one subject

upon which all good men may unitedly agree, it is in imploring the

gracious favor of the God of Nations upon the struggle our people are

making for the preservation of their precious birthright of civil and

religious liberty.”

And, finally, there is the compassion to “visit with tender care and

consolation” all those who have suffered, a theme that he carried so

eloquently into his second inaugural address “with malice toward none;

with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see

the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in . . . to do all

which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves,

and with all nations.”

Some thoughts all of us might find useful on this Thanksgiving Day.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.