If George Washington was an inspiring leader on the battlefield, he was more reluctant to take charge once his weary boots were far from the action.
For some, including Congress, Washington would be the perfect choice to lead a country that couldn’t quite agree on how to govern itself just yet. Washington was already serving as the president of the Constitutional Convention, a group of delegates tasked with hammering out a new constitution for the United States. And despite the bloodshed and anti-monarchical vitriol spewed during the Revolutionary War, it was ironic that some delegates—brash New Yorker Alexander Hamilton among them—favored a structure of government resembling that of England. Washington, for his part, was not overly keen to head up a new country after years spent in battle. There was a long road ahead.
If elected, the man who had no part in signing the Declaration of Independence, but who had so great a role in securing the independence it set forth, would now preside over a country held together by not only a brand-new constitution, but a highly contested one at that. The document made no mention of women. It counted enslaved people as equal to three-fifths of those who were white. Representation—a sticking point while under British rule and in many ways the scale-tipping impetus for the revolution itself—remained a key issue. Smaller states worried they would lose their voice alongside larger, more populous ones. The populous states didn’t want those with fewer citizens dictating policy. Finally, on September 17, 1787, after cantankerous debates that nearly broke apart the freshly formed country, the Constitutional Convention voted to accept the Constitution of the United States of America. This document was signed by thirty-nine of the original fifty-five convention delegates.
However, the battle was not over; the hard-fought document still had significant political hurdles to clear before it became the law of the land. Ratification challenges loomed up and down the coast, with states threatening to remain holdouts until amendments guaranteeing the rights of citizens were added to the document. Then, finally, on June 21, 1788, roughly four months before Sarah Josepha Buell’s birth, her home state of New Hampshire became the ninth of the thirteen states to ratify the document, placing the framework of this new government fully into effect throughout the former colonies. The infighting among states and their representatives was not over, of course, and a bill of rights would soon be tacked on to address lingering issues. Amending the Constitution in such a manner would continue to the present day, with each additional tweak often a sign of changing American values and expanding minds, ideally in keeping with an increasing and increasingly diverse nation.
The new constitution laid the groundwork for the first-ever quadrennial election, and Washington’s election was a unanimous one. The day of his inauguration, April 30, 1789, was exceptionally celebratory. From the gunfire salutes at sunrise over his namesake military installation of Fort George, to the swearing in before hundreds of onlookers and foreign dignitaries at Federal Hall in New York City by his vice president, John Adams, to his delivery of the inaugural “inaugural” address in that same building’s Senate chamber, the merrymaking continued. Church bells rang throughout the city and a new—if questionable—era in this new country began. At the time of Washington’s inauguration, North Carolina and Rhode Island had yet to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
Political fracturing and factions showed the potential to grow into full party rifts. There were attacks along the borders, debtor prisons were chock-full of residents, and real estate bubbles burst that found even members of Congress upside down on their investments in this supposedly booming land.
And yet.
Within his very first year in office, and with internal struggling and external threats looming on the political horizon and waiting at porous frontier borders, the president of these tenuously united states made a proclamation of a decidedly unpolitical kind. It spoke not of treaties and policies or polemics but rather of gratitude and thanks. There would, he proclaimed, throughout each and every one of the thirteen states, be a national day of general thanksgiving.
Hale would have had no recollection of the first-ever thanksgiving proclamation issued by a president of the United States of America. She would have been on her family’s farm outside Newport, New Hampshire, catching perhaps her first glimpses of late-afternoon autumn light dancing on the meandering currents of the Sugar River. Her parents and her brother were still alive, harvest was upon them, and young Sarah Josepha Buell would have been just one year old.
It was not the first time a proclamation of this sort had been issued in the colonies. The concept of unifying thanksgivings for all “Americans,” such as they were during the revolution, predated the signing of the Constitution. During the war, proclamations of thanksgivings might follow significant successes in the struggle for independence and not necessarily those of successful harvests. For example, as Continental Congress member John Adams noted in his diary on July 24, 1766: “Thanksgiving for the Repeal of the Stamp-Act.”
Years later, in the midst of war, the Continental Congress proclaimed a thanksgiving throughout the colonies. On October 21, 1777, just four days after British General John Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, New York, to General Horatio Gates—under whose command Hale’s father, Gordon Buell, had served—noted Philadelphia surgeon Dr. Benjamin Rush penned a note to Adams:
“Adieu!” Rush wrote his friend and congressional colleague. “The good Christians and true Whigs expect a recommendation from Congress for a day of public thanksgiving for our Victories in the North. Let it be the same day for the whole continent.”
John Adams’s wife, Abigail, also contacted her husband upon hearing of the surrender, writing, “The joyfull News of the Surrender of General Burgoin and all his Army to our Victorious Troops prompted me to take a ride this afternoon with my daughter to Town to join to morrow with my Friends in thanksgiving and praise to the Supreem Being who hath so remarkably delivered our Enimies into our Hands.”
Having a predominant hand in that particular proclamation was member of Congress and legendary ale namesake Samuel Adams, who, with some assistance from congressmen Richard Henry Lee of Virginia and Daniel Roberdeau from Pennsylvania, proclaimed Thursday, December 18, 1777, a “day of thanksgiving” as God had seen to “prosper the means used for the support of our troops and to crown our arms with most signal success.” The proclamation intended that “with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts.”
Roughly a year later, in 1778, statesman Samuel Adams’s pen was also behind the congressional proclamation establishing December 30 of that year a day of thanksgiving for the support of the French for the American Revolution. These observances crossed cultural lines as well. Nearly three years later, in 1781, John Adams wrote Charles W. F. Dumas, a French-born agent for the Americans living in Holland, who had developed the first cipher used diplomatically by the Continental Congress. “The French Troops winter in Virginia,” Adams wrote. “G. Washington returns to North River, to join the Body, which was left on the North River under General Heath. Our Countrymen will keep thanksgiving as devoutly as their Allies sing Te Deum.” This, in reference to a Latin thanksgiving prayer long invoked by Catholics in France and elsewhere. Again, thanksgiving in this sense was essentially a penitent one, one of giving thanks in prayer.
The ratification of the Treaty of Paris came in January 1784, the official end of the Revolutionary War. And the first thanksgiving proclaimed by the fledgling American government as independent from British rule was set for November 26, 1784. The observance of public thanksgiving for the peace is one that extended across the pond as well. In July 1784, while in London, Abigail Adams wrote her friend Elizabeth Smith Shaw stating, “This is a day set apart for publick thanksgiving for the peace. The Shops are all shut and there is more the appearance of Solemnnity than on the Sabbeth.”
Washington had his own thoughts on thanksgiving. The August following the start of his first term, Washington had written one of his trusted advisers, Virginia representative James Madison, about approaching the Senate with regard to proclaiming a national day of thanksgiving. Then in September, Elias Boudinot of New Jersey introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives “to request that [the president] would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” President George Washington’s proclamation, the first national proclamation ever issued by a president of the United States, arrived October 3, 1789, and read:
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. . . .
Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
In covering the proclamation, newspapers across the thirteen states reported it as a day of reflection and service—not feasting.
“Thursday 26th,” Washington wrote in his diary in November 1789. “Being the day appointed for a thanksgiving I went to St. Paul’s Chapel though it was most inclement and stormy—but few people at Church.” Washington also spent seven pounds, four shillings, and ten pence to buy beer and other provisions for debtor prisoners at the New York City jail, then located next to the City Alms House on the street known as Broad Way.
The first thanksgiving under the new Constitution was not entirely warmly received and its wording rubbed some the wrong way, as continued indications of conflict regarding the rights of states within this new union were proving to be an issue that showed little sign of abating. Thomas Tudor Tucker of South Carolina, for example, felt that those living in America “may not be inclined to return thanks for a Constitution until they have experienced that it promotes their safety and happiness. . . . If a day of thanksgiving must take place, let it be done by the authority of the several States; they know best what reason their constituents have to be pleased with the establishment of this Constitution.” Representative Aedanus Burke, also of South Carolina, himself recoiled at what he felt to be the “mimicking of European customs where they made a mere mockery of thanksgivings.”
After Washington’s proclamation in 1789, many state leaders continued to proclaim their own individual thanksgivings, as many of them already had become accustomed to, often choosing dates to suit their own calendars, harvest related or not. In 1794, in his role as governor of Massachusetts, Samuel Adams issued a proclamation in October for a “Day of Public Thanksgiving,” calling on ministers of all faiths to gather with members of their congregations throughout the state. “And I do earnestly recommend that all such labor and recitations as are not consistent with the solemnity of the occasion may be carefully suspended on the said day.”
In 1795, Washington issued another proclamation for a national day of thanksgiving throughout the country, but this time it was issued on New Year’s Day and set a day for thanksgiving in February. Washington cited the many reasons the country had to be thankful: America was not at war. There was thanks to be given for what Washington referred to as a “great degree of internal tranquility,” and he wanted to offer thanks for the “suppression of an insurrection which so wantonly threatened it.” This was a reference to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, which saw farmers and distillers in Pennsylvania rising in protest of a federal tax on their product. “I George Washington President of the United States do recommend to all Religious Societies and Denominations and to all persons whomsoever, within the United States to set apart and observe Thursday, the nineteenth day of February next, as a day of public Thanksgiving and prayer.”
Washington concluded with calls for humility and charity as well as gratitude. He poignantly noted that citizens should be preserved from “the arrogance of prosperity and from hazarding the advantages we enjoy by delusive pursuits.” Individuals should seek to “merit the continuance of his favors, but not abusing them, by our gratitude for them, and by a correspondent conduct as citizens and as men.” He mentioned that in doing so, America might “render this Country more and more as a safe and propitious asylum for the unfortunate of other Countries,” and encouraged, again, charity, that through pious habits his compatriots could seek to “impart all the blessings we possess, or ask for ourselves, to the whole family of mankind.”
Individual proclamations throughout the states continued. Then after ascending to the most powerful position in the country in 1797, President John Adams took an even more solemn tack in his proclamation, which he issued on March 23, 1798.
“I do hereby recommend, that Wednesday, the Ninth Day of May next be observed throughout the United States, as a day of Solemn Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer,” Adams wrote. The Puritan tradition of spring fasting was an established one in New England, and John Adams was decidedly of Puritan stock, even if his religious views had evolved in a more Unitarian and Presbyterian direction. Adams hoped for the health of people and that agriculture, commerce, and arts be “blessed and prospered . . . and that the Blessings of Peace, Freedom, and Pure Religion, may be speedily extended to all the Nations of the Earth.” He concluded: “Finally I recommend that on the said day, the Duties of Humiliation and Prayer be accompanied by fervent Thanksgiving.” He followed suit the next April of 1799.
However, when Thomas Jefferson soundly beat John Adams to win the presidency in 1800, the Virginia planter, inventor, and violinist would issue no such proclamation. He was staunchly devoted to the separation of church and state. He shared those thoughts in writing with Reverend Samuel Miller, Presbyterian theologian and professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary, writing from Washington on January 23, 1808:
Sir, I have duly received your favor of the 18th and am thankful to you for having written it, because it is more agreeable to prevent than to refuse what I do not think myself authorized to comply with. I consider the government of the US as interdicted by the constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the US. . . . Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act of discipline, every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it.
Jefferson also acknowledged the actions of his predecessors—both of whom had issued their own proclamations—then continued: “Be this as it may, every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, & mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the US and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.”
Four years later, in 1812, former president John Adams reflected on the tone of his own proclamation, again writing his friend Benjamin Rush:
The National Fast, reccommended by me turned me out of Office. It was connected with, the general Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which I had no concern in. That assembly has allarmed and alienated Quakers, Anabaptists Mennonists, Moravians, Sweedenborgians, Methodist, Catholicks, Protestant Episcopalians, Arians Socinians, Arminians & &c. Atheists and Deists might be added. A general Suspicion prevailed that the Presbyterian Church was ambitious and aimed at an Establishment as a National Church. I was represented as a Presbyterian and at the head of this political and ecclesiastical Project. The Secret Whisper ran through them all the Sects “Let Us have Jefferson, Madison, Burr, any body, whether they be Philosophers, Deist or even Atheists, rather than a Presbyterian President.” This Principle is at the Bottom of the Unpopularity of national Fasts and Thanksgivings, Nothing is more dreaded than the National Government meddling with Religion. This wild Letter I very much fear, contains Seeds of an Ecclesiastical History of the U.S. for a Century to come.
Later, Adams’s grandson—and future biographer—Charles Francis Adams, Sr., described thanksgiving in his diary on November 26, 1828, as “the substitute of the Puritans for Christmas.” On Christmas of that year, during the presidential term of his father, John Quincy Adams, the twenty-one-year-old Charles lamented that while he had looked to Christmas as a time for pleasure and happiness, “These ideas are not congenial here, for with the customs of the Puritans they transfer to Thanksgiving, an Institution of their own, what ought to come at Christmas and New Year.”
For many communities the day after the state-declared annual thanksgiving was traditionally much more revelatory. A day of thanksgiving would be declared and solemnly observed, with labor and recreation frowned upon. The day after featured, as one Connecticut newspaper described it, “widely different amusements to suit all kinds of folks. In shooting turkeys and hens, visiting the neighbors, and taking a nearer view of the eclipsed luxuries of the day before.”
If Charles Francis Adams bewailed thanksgiving’s usurping of Christmas cheer, he nevertheless believed in gratitude as an action worth effort, writing on Thursday, November 29, 1832, of the “practice of thankfulness.”
“Suffering in this world is natural. Prosperity is not so, if long continued. Therefore man must not complain if he experiences what he was born to experience, and he must be thankful for the good gifts which he has no right to claim.”
Two years later, when Massachusetts celebrated thanksgiving on November 27, 1834, he complained in his diary: “New England never has been able to throw off the sad colored livery which distinguished its origin,” adding that he declined to go to a friend’s home where he would have to partake of “the excessive table which is the only amusement of a Thanksgiving day in most families.”
As for New Englander Hale, she had developed a passion for both—thankfulness and an excessive table. But gubernatorial proclamations were not enough, in her opinion. She would continue to make her case in the Lady’s Book for an annual holiday. She knew it was time to take it beyond the pages of the magazine and to the only office in the country that could truly make this day of thanks all that she hoped it could be. Every year. Always.