October 3 · This Day in America
Eight months into the presidency of a country that barely exists yet, George Washington puts his name to a proclamation. He asks the people of the United States to set aside Thursday, the 26th of November, as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer — gratitude for surviving a war, and for the strange, almost unbelievable fact that thirteen quarreling states had peaceably written themselves a Constitution and agreed to live under it. There was no precedent for any of this. Republics were supposed to fail. Washington's proclamation is, in a sense, a man stopping to notice that the experiment is still standing. It would take Lincoln, seventy-four years later in the middle of a war that nearly ended the experiment, to fix the holiday on the calendar for good. But the first time a president asked the country to be grateful together, it was this day.
Source: founders.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1863
In the bloodiest year of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issues a proclamation setting the last Thursday of November as a national day of thanksgiving — every year, for good. The country was tearing itself in half. He asked it to give thanks anyway, and to ask, with humility, for the healing of the nation's wounds. The holiday Americans gather around each November dates from this dark and deliberate choice.
Source: www.nps.gov
“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.”George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789