For Decades, Southern States Considered Thanksgiving an Act of Northern Aggression

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The first account of American Thanksgiving is a letter written about the Pilgrim’s meal in 1621. The holiday evolved from a traditional harvest supper to a Puritan day of gratitude to God in colonial New England. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, it further changed into a more secular celebration as the feasting portion overtook prayer. Northern governors often declared state-wide thanksgiving days. They were usually in late November or early December, but there was no unified national holiday.

Thanksgiving may have remained a regional, ad-hoc holiday if not for the efforts of Sarah Josepha Hale, a Northern writer who is often considered the “Godmother” of American Thanksgiving. In 1825, she initiated annual letter-writing campaigns to governors asking that they collectively declare the final Thursday of November a celebration of thanksgiving. Her 1827 novel, Northwood: A Tale of New England, gives the first detailed account of the Puritan Thanksgiving feast. She dedicates an entire chapter to the meal, in which she describes the “celebrated pumpkin pie” as “an indispensable part of a good and true Yankee Thanksgiving.”

As more states—mainly in the North—recognized Thanksgiving, the pie became closely associated with Northern tradition. But simultaneously, tension was growing over the strengthening abolitionist sentiment in the North. Soon enough, this ignited Hale’s goal of a nationwide (or even trans-national) Thanksgiving.

Southern leaders attacked Thanksgiving as the North’s attempt to impart Yankee values on the South. Virginians, especially, retaliated against Hale’s campaign. In 1856, the Richmond Whig published a scathing editorial on the District of Columbia’s “repugnant” declaration of thanksgiving, arguing that the holiday did nothing but rob men of a day’s wages and encourage drunkenness. As for the Northerners who started the celebration: “They have crazy society within New England’s limits, where they have been productive of little but mischief—of unadulterated and unmistakable injuries to sound religion, morals, and patriotism.”

Eventually, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared the first national Thanksgiving on the final Thursday in November of 1863.

Lincoln set an annual tradition of presidential Thanksgiving proclamations. But for decades, the country grappled over Thanksgiving as a marker of national identity. In Texas, Governor Oran Milo Roberts, a former Confederate army officer, refused to declare Thanksgiving a holiday as late as the 1880s. Some Southern governors would follow the annual presidential proclamations, but move the date of Thanksgiving to resist its message of national unity.

I know Thanksgiving's over down there but I came across this and thought it was kind of interesting and relevant to a couple threads I seen on here about people today trying to take away thanksgiving. It seems like America's always had a somewhat divided opinion on thanksgiving.

The quote about new englad was kinda funny to me. It looks like what a lot atsers say about California.

I dunno the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.

Interesting, I didn’t know this. And it does kind of mirror a lot of peoples thinking on California today.

I think the reason for that is because a certain type of people have always defined themselves by what they aren’t, so they never have to face who they actually are.

Food for thought.

Why do ridiculous folks write such as all encompassing ? A widespread ideal ?
I bet , in the day as today , one would be hard pressed to find anyone that would agree with that.
Yet , to say a few reflects the will of the many....
Unbelievable.
(I really hope you do not believe such foolishness)

She dedicates an entire chapter to the meal, in which she describes the “celebrated pumpkin pie”

Who is against pumpkin pie really? If you can't come together for some pumpkin pie then you deserve whatever befalls you

I celebrate it off-season too

Thanks for the information Dug 88. I never knew about this, or maybe I heard about it and have forgotten. S&F for some interesting holiday trivia.

I had always regarded Thanksgiving's Day as a fall harvest celebration when the all the efforts of the farming season was enjoyed by everyone.

The prayer aspect is still observed by many families as a blessing before eating the meal, being thankful is usually included in the blessing prayer.

The original Pilgrim celebration lasted for three days and they partied with their Native friends. The Natives supplied the tobaHcco and I know the Pilgrims had beer, in fact landing at Plymouth Rock was a decision made because they ran out of beer on board the Mayflower. They had to use alternatives for barley (it didn't grow well there) and hops (didn't have any), but it was fermented and ready to consume by the big celebration. Makes me wonder why someone didn't think to bring some hops to grow on the journey to the New World.

Celebrating the genocide and slavery of native people by the colonisers

originally posted by: NarcolepticBuddha

She dedicates an entire chapter to the meal, in which she describes the “celebrated pumpkin pie”

Who is against pumpkin pie really? If you can't come together for some pumpkin pie then you deserve whatever befalls you

I celebrate it off-season too

Not a fan. Apple crumb, please. Or pecan, even.

a reply to: dug88

I never heard of any of that before. I attended school in Virginia and lived in Richmond for 25 years afterward. While there, the subject of Thanksgiving arose and when I mentioned the Pilgrims, I was severely rebuked. They told me that the first Thanksgiving was in Virginia, not Massachusetts.

I expressed my surprise upon hearing this so they took me to a nearby library and showed it to me in a history book. It was right there near the story of Pocahontas. The First Thanksgiving Took Place in Virginia, not Massachusetts.

After a rough two-and-a-half months on the Atlantic, the ship entered the Chesapeake Bay on November 28, 1619. It took another week to navigate the stormy bay, but they arrived at their destination, Berkeley Hundred, later called Berkeley Plantation, on December 4. They disembarked and prayed. Historians think there was nothing but old ship rations to eat, so the settlers may have concocted a meal of oysters and ham out of necessity rather than celebration. At the behest of written orders given by the Berkeley Company to Captain Woodlief, it was declared that their arrival must “be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.” And that’s exactly what they did–for two years. On March 22, 1622, the Powhatan, who’d realized the settlers intended to expand their territory and continue their attempts to convert and “civilize” them, attacked Berkeley and other settlements, killing 347. Woodlief survived, but soon after, Berkeley Hundred was abandoned. For three centuries, Virginia’s first Thanksgiving was lost to history.

In 1931, retired William & Mary President (and son of President John Tyler) Dr. Lyon G. Tyler was working on a book about early Virginia history. While doing research, he stumbled upon the Nibley Papers, documents and records taken by John Smyth of Nibley, Gloucestershire, about the 1619 settlement of Berkeley. Originally published by the New York State Library in 1899, the papers’ historical significance had gone undetected. According to Virginia historians, the papers are concrete proof that the New World’s “day of Thanksgiving” originated in their region.

Yate's Account of a Voyage to Virginia in 1619

Instructions to Captain Woodleaf, Virginia Papers, 1619 Ordinances direccions and Instructions to Captaine John Woodleefe for the gouerment of or men and servants in the Towne and hundred of Berkley in Virginia giuen by vs. S.r Willm Throkmorton knight and barronet Richard Bearkley Esq; George Thorpe esq; and John Smyth gent wherevnto our commission of the date hereof made to the said Captaine Woodleefe hath reference, the fourth day of September 1619 Anno xvij Jac. regis Angliae &c 1 Impr wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perputually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty god. [Note: This is the basis for the claim that Virginia was the site of the first Thanksgiving, a year before the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth.]

Thanksgiving is actually just a social event. I do not know why they even made an issue about it long ago.

Talk about racist, they made Charley Brown racist now. www.yahoo.com...

originally posted by: NarcolepticBuddha

She dedicates an entire chapter to the meal, in which she describes the “celebrated pumpkin pie”

Who is against pumpkin pie really? If you can't come together for some pumpkin pie then you deserve whatever befalls you

I celebrate it off-season too

www.snopes.com...

Apparently the canned pumpkin is often just squash.