October 3, 1863 – On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation designating the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. The proclamation came in the midst of the Civil War. In his address, Lincoln chose to focus on the country’s prosperity: “[T]he country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, ...
“Went to school in forenoon for the last time. Vacation! Vacation!! no school for three months,” begins the diary of twelve-year-old Marion (“Minnie”) Boyd Allen on June 15, 1875. This first entry—one which we would expect to find in a twelve-year-old’s diary now as then—is the perfect opening to a volume that proves to be ...
It has been a big year for some of the country’s most important documents. January saw the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, and just last week was the 150th anniversary of the reading of the Gettysburg Address. This Thursday in the United States we celebrate our national day of Thanksgiving, and so are looking back, ...
Every Wednesday before Thanksgiving for the past fifty years, the Wall Street Journal has published excerpts from Nathaniel Morton's 1669 history of the Plymouth colony, New Englands Memoriall, on its editorial page. While Morton's history does contain the first published list of those who signed the Mayflower Compact, it features only a negligible account of ...
I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving feasts! Hopefully you didn’t overload too much on pumpkins, squash and sweet potatoes. If you can still stomach thinking about food, read on about the results of my historical pie adventure. I chose to follow the pumpkin pie recipe (from The White House Cookbook, 1877), but to mix ...
Believe it or not, Thanksgiving is less than a week away. So for all of you hosts and hostesses out there, I thought I’d share a menu to make your worries seem a little less overwhelming. Perhaps you, like me, are already stressing about the big day, planning and shopping and worrying about how to ...
