CHAPTER 8

ON A THURSDAY IN NOVEMBER

She knelt with hands clasped, her eyes raised skyward, with a shield and sword lying on the floor beside her. A flag was draped over the altar before her, and on that altar was engraved a single word: UNION.

The woman was Columbia, the personification of the United States of America, namesake of the nation’s capital. She occupied the central panel of the illustration, titled “Thanksgiving-Day.”

The German-born illustrator Thomas Nast had created the illustration for the December 5, 1863, issue of Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. In addition to the central panel featuring Columbia, there were three inset panels above and three below. The top center space featured presidents Washington and Lincoln, kneeling across from each other—Washington on the battlefield, Lincoln resting his forearms on a chair—as if this latest thanksgiving was in homage to that of 1789. This thanksgiving was occurring on the very same day in the month of November that Washington himself had chosen. “Thanksgiving-Day, November 26, 1863” ran across the bottom of the page. Panels featuring the army and the navy flanked the presidents, while beneath the image of Columbia were panels titled “Town,” “Country,” and “Emancipation.” The characters in the images were both known and anonymous, common and heroic. Familiar politicians and average citizens.

Nast’s sketches were not limited to cartoon illustrations; there were also—in an era of extremely limited photography—drawings of battlefield scenes. These and other artworks were initially engraved on wood before being transferred to print for publication. Magazines like Harper’s employed engravers who would take an illustrator’s work and meticulously carve it into wood in reverse. In order to facilitate this process, Nast, a prolific and sought-after illustrator, occasionally drew his images backward directly onto wood blocks himself.

At the time, Columbia was a popular and perhaps the most common physical representation of the young nation. Though Uncle Sam—commonly linked with a New York State meat-packer named Samuel Wilson who supplied troops during the War of 1812—had appeared as a national mascot as early as the 1820s, his ubiquitous scowl and goatee had yet to take firm hold in the nation’s consciousness. (Nast himself would accelerate that process when he depicted Uncle Sam in 1869.)

One of the earliest expressions of Columbia—a name derived from Latin for “lands of Columbus”—as a persona came courtesy of the pen of Phillis Wheatley, the first Black poet in the colonies to publish a book of verse: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, released in September 1773. Born in West Africa’s Senegambia region, Wheatley was enslaved as a child, sent to Boston, and purchased by John and Susanna Wheatley. The Wheatleys’ daughter tutored Phillis, who published her first poem in a Rhode Island newspaper in 1767. But it was her poem “To His Excellency, George Washington,” which she sent to Washington himself and which was eventually published in Pennsylvania Magazine, that captured the spirit of Columbia as no one had before.

The goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,

Olive and laurel binds her golden hair:

Wherever shines this native of the skies,

Unnumber’d charms and recent graces rise.

Muse! bow propitious while my pen relates

How pour her armies through a thousand gates . . .

Shall I to Washington their praise recite? . . .

Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,

Thy ev’ry action let the goddess guide.

A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,

With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! be thine.

Upon receiving the poem, Washington—who at the time had recently been appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army—wrote to Wheatley, thanking her for the “polite notice of me, in the elegant Lines you enclosed.” The letter is believed to be the only occasion when Washington—who personally held more than one hundred enslaved people, not including those held by his wife, Martha—corresponded with an enslaved person. Wheatley’s “elegant lines” and “great poetical Talents,” as Washington observed, were formative in the creation of and hastened the acceptance of the personification of Columbia, which countless others—Thomas Nast among them—would later exploit.

A week before Nast’s illustration appeared, a very divided nation and those beyond its borders watched as this new national thanksgiving unfolded. After Lincoln’s proclamation, various governors throughout the country, including some in the South, followed suit.

Throughout the warring states, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, stories of simple and joyful, somber and reflective celebrations were shared. The war, of course, had not ceased; and in the press, stories abounded about the Union victories at Chattanooga. In Virginia, Massachusetts troops of the 10th and 37th regiments prepared for a battle. “Those who were not too much exhausted made fires over which their ‘Thanksgiving Dinner’ of coffee and ‘hard tack’ was prepared. The most sumptuous repast could not have been more welcome.”

Nurse Clara Barton had spent much of 1863 off the coast of South Carolina, often between Hilton Head and Morris Island, ministering to battle-worn soldiers in both locales. In November, Barton traveled to St. Helena Island, also in South Carolina, where she celebrated the day with the 7th Connecticut Regiment stationed there. For the soldiers, there were ten roasted pigs. Barton and the wives—many of whom had become friends of the nursing legend—enjoyed a turkey dinner. That night, Barton set off for home, traveling across the bay.

The Union soldiers camped on Morris Island would have a decidedly different thanksgiving. Brigadier General Quincy Gillmore’s troops had long been encamped on the South Carolina isle, having survived the brutal Second Battle of Fort Wagner earlier that year. Among those fighting in that battle was the 54th Massachusetts Regiment—the first official all-Black regiment in the Union Army—under the leadership of a Massachusetts patrician, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Frederick Douglass’s son Charles had taken ill and never left Massachusetts after joining up with the 54th. But Charles’s brother Lewis, then a sergeant, was there. He had written to his fiancée, Amelia, of the horrors of the wretched battles he had already endured, on the eve of what would be the most devastating encounter yet for his regiment. “My Dear girl I hope again to see you. I must bid you farewell should I be killed,” he had written in July. “Remember if I die I die in a good cause.”

Barton had been on hand to help wounded soldiers, and Lewis Douglass was among those injured. There were massive losses—more than fifteen hundred soldiers had died, including Shaw. Confederate forces had abandoned Fort Wagner just over a month earlier. The remaining Union troops managed to pull together their holiday, and later shared this correspondence with the South Carolina newspaper the New South:

“Of course you do not suppose that we had turkey, roast-beef champaign [sic] and the like. No! we poor soldiers, who fight for the honor of the old flag—thirteen dollars per month!—here no such epicurean desert [sic]; nor are we permitted to dream of good dinners unless by special order from the commissariat department. Yesterday, however, we tickled our diaphragms with dead pig salted, an extra red herring, some venerable pickles and then washed it down with the most villanous water yet discovered on this desolate island.”

African American troops throughout the war shared their experiences of the holiday as well. William P. Woodlin, a Black soldier present at the siege of Petersburg, Virginia, wrote in his diary on November 26:

“Thanksgiving day. A present of $100 made to the Reg which was laid out in apples, pies & coffee. Speeches by Gov. Cannon of Del. a gentle[man] from Eng[land] and some others.”

Corporal James Henry Gooding of the Massachusetts 54th—the regiment which had been at least partially hatched at that thanksgiving dinner in Boston only a year earlier—shared his regiment’s version of the celebration, spent on Morris Island, as bombardment of nearby Fort Sumter and Charleston continued.

He wrote that the day was “just cool and keen enough to make one feel that it was a genuine old New England Thanksgiving day, although it was not impregnated with the odor of pumpkin pies, plum puddings, and wine sauce, nor the savory roasts, boils and ‘schews’ familiar to the yankee homes of New England. But we made up the deficiency by the religious observance of the day in a very appropriate manner.”

Gooding shared his reports from the field with the Mercury newspaper out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. “Our correspondent,” the editors of that publication wrote, “is a colored man belonging to this city. . . . He is a truthful and intelligent correspondent, and a good soldier.”

After the religious service was completed, the rest of the day was devoted to eating and sports. “The officers of each company treated their men,” Gooding wrote, “to cakes, oranges, apples, raisins, besides baker’s bread, and butter. There were also games including sack races and blindfolded wheelbarrow competitions. Added to that,” he reported, “we had a greased pole set up, with a pair of new pantaloons tied to the end, with $13 in the pocket for the lucky one who could get it, by climbing to the top.”

Reflecting on the volunteer nature of their dangerous trials, Gooding wrote, “So you see the boys are all alive and full of fun; they don’t intend to be lonesome or discouraged whether Uncle Sam pays them or not; in fact the day was kept up by the 54th with more spirit than by any other regiment on the island.”

Also tending to the needs of Black soldiers was women’s rights activist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. Sixty-six-year-old Truth, who had been born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree, had emancipated herself before being legally freed by New York’s Anti-Slavery Act. She went from door to door in Battle Creek, Michigan, collecting funds for the First Michigan Regiment of colored soldiers bivouacked in Detroit so that they might enjoy a thanksgiving dinner. Though she was successful in her efforts, they were not always well received. One man greeted Truth by hurling insults at her about her race, the war, and more. Truth asked him his name. “I am the only son of my mother,” he said, to which Truth replied, “I am glad there are no more.” She delivered the food herself to those troops at Camp Ward, to an enthusiastic reception that was covered in the Detroit newspapers, among them the Advertiser and Tribune. “Sojourner Truth, who carries not only a tongue of fire, but a heart of love,” the paper reported, “was the bearer of these offerings.” Truth also delivered a speech on the occasion, “glowing with patriotism, exhortation, and good wishes, which was responded to by rounds of enthusiastic cheers.”

Charity shone throughout the country, especially in the capital region of Washington, DC, where many thanksgiving dinners were served at area hospitals. In Wheeling, West Virginia, contributions were solicited for the soldiers’ fund. In Buffalo, New York, a call went out in the local newspaper to visit the “fatherless and the widow in their affliction.” A Nashville convalescent camp, with the aid of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, held religious services and served dinner to roughly two thousand recovering soldiers.

There were parades and balls and simple sermons. Government and business offices remained closed. In other areas, the affair was decidedly more robust and raucous. The Meridian Hill House in Washington held a “Grand Shooting Match” that thanksgiving day and announced in the paper a “prize to be a live bear weighing 200 pounds. Distance to be 600 yards. Come one, come all.”

The southern states were not absent from the thanksgiving festivities by any stretch, though throughout the Confederacy, expressions and interpretations varied: Charles Macbeth, mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, proclaimed November 19—a full week before Lincoln’s appointed date—as a day of “Thanksgiving and Prayer,” citing a “deep sense of gratitude” that “our beloved and venerated city has been so far mercifully preserved from the destruction meditated against it by a barbarous and blood-thirsty foe.”

The Daily True Delta out of New Orleans called thanksgiving day “festive,” adding that “the whole population of the city, we venture to say, was very thankful that those who could not sport the turkey on the table could satisfy the demands of nature with less costly food.”

A hearty sense of humor was not lacking in the pages of the New South newspaper of Port Royal, South Carolina. One correspondent offered the following rundown of a celebration he attended, writing: “Net results of the dinner, one good speech, five middling ones, eight decidedly dull ones, and the balance not to be mentioned in the Department under penalty of death. Casualties, one Correspondent with head greatly enlarged; several with marasmus in the pocket . . . the baskets of ‘cold wittals’ for the missionaries at Beaufort. I hope the representatives of the Northern Press will hereafter remember me in all public dinners in the Department.”

The U.S. territories, too—many of which had long been on the receiving end of Sarah Josepha Hale’s campaign—partook of the day. The governor of the Washington territory, William Pickering, implored residents to hold religious meetings. The U.S. Minister Resident of Honolulu, as a “representative of the United States Government in His Majesty’s Kingdom,” asked that those on the Hawaiian Islands observe a day of thanksgiving and prayer. An article in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser quoted the minister in what seemed to be a direct reference to Hale’s ongoing efforts: “In 1860, twenty States held this anniversary on the last Thursday of November,” the minister said, “and prior to the opening of the rebellion, there was a general desire expressed by the most influential papers in various parts of the Union that it should be changed from a State to a National Anniversary.” The article continued, capturing a sentiment not uncommon in so many of the papers of the day: “A civil war may seem to some to be an unfit period for national thanksgiving. But a glance at the history of the past two years will show us much for which Americans have reason to be grateful.”

The London Times, Confederate-leaning newspapers happily reported, thought Lincoln’s actions presumptuous, as there was little for which to be thankful, and questioned why Lincoln was “justified in pronouncing with certainty that his affairs on the 26th November will call for thanksgiving and not humiliation?”

In contrast to the Times’s take, however, was the Leavenworth Bulletin out of Kansas, which noted the novelty of Lincoln’s proclamation and asserted that the circumstances made the holiday most appropriate: “We believe no President, except the present, has ever suggested a Thanksgiving Day, and doubtless he never would, had it not been for the extraordinary times in which we live. In times past the Governor of each State has selected the day, conformable to the wishes of the people; but there is at this time an appropriateness in the action of the president which commends itself to all.”

And on the far reaches of the United States, Governor Leland Stanford of the thirteen-year-old state of California observed, “[W]hile we deplore our condition as a nation, we have manifold reasons for offering up our united thanksgiving as a community.”

Those engaged in business—especially those who trafficked in turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens—seized this opportunity to call attention to their wares. Grocers posted ads like this one for Dow & Burkhardt’s of Louisville, Kentucky: “THANKSGIVING IS COMING,” communicating its offerings in poetry:

The good old times of ancient bliss draw nigh,

When sires turn to youth and youth to pie—. . . .

But after all our joys were incomplete

Without the luscious pies made from mince-meat. . . .

The purveyors waxed ever deliciously on, rhyming “plump” with “venison rump,” adding, “While cranberry sauce, with turkeys fat and young add greater relish for the epicurean tongue.”

Sadly, however, upon reaching the last line of their advertisement, the writers were at a loss to find anything of the season’s sale to rhyme with “Burkhardt’s.”

The feast day was not without incident, of course. California’s Santa Cruz Weekly reported a theft at a local ranch of a dozen turkeys, all of which had been slated for thanksgiving celebrations throughout their community. “May the gaunt ghosts of twelve spoiled dinners haunt the villain,” the paper wrote.

Meanwhile, across the ocean, the president and Hale’s call for unity was embraced even in that first year. A correspondent for the New York Times reported on a thanksgiving celebration in Berlin, including services at the American Chapel and dinner at the St. Petersburg Hotel with many German guests in attendance. Ministers to Switzerland and Berlin raised toasts to Lincoln and the king and royal family of Prussia. Dr. Henry Philip Tappan, president of the University of Michigan, raised a glass to the Union—“it must and shall be preserved”—and the paper enthused that “[t]he cause of liberty throughout the world was inseparably connected with the perpetuity of the American Union.” After singing the praises of prior meals and festivals enjoyed in the German city, the correspondent raved, “None, however, will be remembered longer or more pleasantly than that of the present year, which was much more numerously attended than its predecessors, and was held in observance of our first National Thanksgiving.”