Thanksgiving is more than just turkey and pumpkin pie. It's a time to heal our nation's wounds and unite. Abraham Lincoln created the holiday for just that purpose. Now it's our turn.

Most Americans are familiar with the first Thanksgiving, a communal feast in 1621 between the Wampanoag and English colonists that symbolizes fraternity and community through food. However, the ...

President Abraham Lincoln’s powerful Thanksgiving proclamation, issued amid the carnage of the Civil War, gave the holiday its statement of purpose. It is "to set apart and observe the last ...

President Abraham Lincoln (left) declared the last Thursday in November a national day of Thanksgiving in an Oct. 3, 1863, proclamation written by Secretary of State William Seward (right).

Hale is credited with persuading Abraham Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday. (Library of Congress) Library of Congress Washington, D.C. Oct. 3, 1863 ...

Just months after the July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg — a scourge that left 50,000 Americans slaughtered in the heat of the Civil War — Lincoln issued a historic Thanksgiving Proclamation.

When President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the National Thanksgiving Day holiday in 1863, he had peace on his mind. The United States was in the midst of The Civil War.

Thanksgiving means actual, not contrived, inclusiveness. President Abraham Lincoln profoundly demonstrates this fundamental point. On October 3, 1863, the White House issued the Thanksgiving Procla… ...

Lincoln sets Thanksgiving as last Thursday in November. During the Civil War, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln set the date for a national day of Thanksgiving to be held on the last Thursday in ...

Lincoln obliged and a few weeks later, on Oct. 3, 1863 — during the height of the Civil War — he issued the Thanksgiving Proclamation. Ever since, the country has celebrated Thanksgiving Day.

President Abraham Lincoln issued his famous “Proclamation of Thanksgiving” on Oct. 3, 1863, with the Civil War still raging. As is our annual tradition, we reproduce the text below in ...

For Lincoln, Thanksgiving was a day to not only reflect on our blessings but repent for our shortcomings and find ways to seek reconciliation to God and to our neighbors.