Sarah Josepha Hale & the Thanksgiving Holiday (Repost from 2020) ~ Julie Lence

courtesy NNDB 

 Sarah Josepha Buell was born October 24, 1788 in Newport, New Hampshire to parents who believed in education for males and females. Her growing up years she received an extensive education and married lawyer, David Hale. The couple had 5 children, but sadly, David died during their 9^th year of marriage, leaving Sarah to raise their children. To earn an income, Sarah began writing poetry, and penned the famous, Mary Had a Little Lamb. She teamed with Reverend John Laurie Blake and helped establish American Ladies Magazine, taking on the position of editor. She moved to Boston and remained there until 1837, often using the magazine to promote women’s issues such as education, child rearing, and reinforcing a woman’s domestic role. She didn’t support the suffragist movement or women entering politics because she believed both would limit a woman’s influence in the home, that women shaped the morals of society and encouraged them to write morally uplifting novels.

 

courtesy NHPR.org

Louis A. Godey bought out America Ladies Magazine in 1837 and changed the name to Godey’s Ladies Book. He offered Sarah the editor position. She accepted and moved to Philadelphia, where she remained editor for 40 years. During that time, she championed civil rights, secured funds to preserve George Washington’s home and to construct the Bunker Hill Monument, both of which are still open today, and helped found Vassar College for women.   

 

courtesy Wikipedia

Throughout her childhood, Sarah celebrated Thanksgiving. She published Northwood: A Tale of New England in 1827, which included a chapter on the Thanksgiving celebration. Many areas in the northeast part of the country celebrated Thanksgiving, but at the time she was editor for Godey’s, Thanksgiving was not a federal holiday. Hoping to rectify that, she began lobbying state and federal officials to pass legislation to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, going so far as to set the holiday on the last Thursday in November. Her requests were mostly ignored, nor was she the first to suggest such a day of thanks. George Washington called for a national day of thanks after the Revolutionary war, and both John Adams and James Madison issued their own proclamations. Nothing was ever done until the Civil War.

 

courtesy wsj.com

Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, issued Thanksgiving Day proclamations in 1861 and 1862. Abraham Lincoln called for a day of thanks in April 1862 and the summer of 1863s, and Sarah continued to lobby for a national holiday by sending letters in September to Lincoln and William Seward, who was Secretary of State. She firmly believed a national holiday might ease the tensions between the north and the south and finally realized her hard efforts when, one week after receiving her letter, Seward drafted Lincoln’s official proclamation making the last Thursday in November an official day of Thanksgiving. 

 

A true pioneer for women, Sarah retired from Godey’s 1877. She died two years later in her Philadelphia home at the age of 92. She’s buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery and a blue historical marker resides at her home on Spruce Street.  

Abe Lincoln, Indian Fighter!

By Andrea Downing

Lincoln, 1846--earliest known photo of him

 Sometimes it might seem that the life of Abraham Lincoln commenced with the Civil War, or perhaps it skipped from birth in a log cabin to the Civil War. And sometimes it seems that ‘The West’ starts with Kansas, part of present-day ‘flyover country’. But long before the Civil War and the great American expansion westward, long before the Transcontinental Railway, the west included Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois, et.al. And then, as later, Native Americans fought for their rights.  So I wonder if you know that Honest Abe was an Indian fighter?  Sort of…

In the early 1800s, there was little sympathy for Native Americans and Lincoln could be considered a man of his time, although a fair one. In 1832 the Illinois militia, which included all white men over the age of eighteen, was called out due to the movement of the Sauk and Fox peoples past the Illinois border.  The United States had previously forced them off their homelands in Illinois, across the Mississippi River. There was a treaty, of course:  the Fourth Treaty of Prairie du Chien, of July, 1830. These Sauk lands stretched from northwestern Illinois to southwestern Wisconsin, but the US government sought to make room for settlers moving into that area and therefore pushed the Indians into present-day Iowa.  The Native Americans faced a hard winter there and were unable to produce crops. It fell to a warrior, Black Hawk, to take them back across the river and try to regain their lands. Having fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812, Black Hawk’s band were known as the British Band and numbered four to five hundred.

Lincoln, then aged twenty-three, joined the Illinois militia. He already had political aspirations and was known locally for his leadership skills. It was no surprise, therefore, that the men—most of whom were rough prairie people—elected him Captain, and he served in this capacity for one month from late April to late May, 1832. He was in the 31st Regiment of Sangamon County Militia, 1st Division, and put in charge of a rifle company of the 4th Regiment of Mounted Volunteers. Lincoln remained modest about his captaincy, although he valued the honor of being chosen.  Fortunately for future events, he never saw any action other than a wrestling match to claim a good camping spot. Years later, in Congress in 1848, Lincoln jested about his militia days and the lack of any fighting: “By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know I am a military Hero? Yes sir; in the days of the Black Hawk war, I fought, bled, and came away.... I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes; and, although I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry.” [1]

All of this is not to say Lincoln’s time in the militia was a walk in the park.  He and his men came upon the results of the Battle of Kellogg’s Grove. Sources quote him as saying, “I remember just how those men looked as we rode up the little hill where their camp was. The red light of the morning sun was streaming upon them as they lay head towards us on the ground. And every man had a round red spot on top of his head, about as big as a dollar where the redskins had taken his scalp. It was frightful, but it was grotesque, and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything all over.”2

Lincoln gets between his men and a Sauk

Despite this, Lincoln was able to save one Sauk, an old man who gave himself up at the camp showing a paper which stated in English that he was a good man.  When Lincoln's men wished to kill him anyway, the Captain got between the Indian and the men and convinced them that this was not the thing civilized men would do.

Lincoln, of course, was eventually mustered out and went on to his political career.  But what happened to Black Hawk? Needless to say, he and his men lost the war.  They were taken captive until another worthless treaty was forced upon them, the so-called Black Hawk Purchase or ‘Treaty with Sauk and Foxes, 1832’, which this time took six million acres in the northeast corner of Iowa—a forty mile strip—at eleven cents an acre.  There would be two further purchases in 1837 and 1842.

Black Hawk lived with the Sauk along the Iowa River and later moved to the Des Moines River near Iowaville in what is present-day south east Iowa. He passed after a short illness in 1838.

Black Hawk

As for Abraham Lincoln, I leave that for your research.

http://andreadowning.com

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[1] Wikimedia quotes this and gives two sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_in_the_Black_Hawk_War

[2] Again, several sources quote this as mentioned in Wiki, above.

      All photos Wikimedia