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THE FEDERALIST(r) DIGEST The Conservative e-Journal of Record * Veritas Vos Liberabit * 20 November 2001 Federalist Edition #01-47 SPECIAL EDITION -- THANKSGIVING *To retrieve today's Brief as HTML printer-friendly text or PDF Link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/current2001.asp *To support The Federalist, Link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/support.asp CONTENTS: The Founders Insight Good News ICTUS Imprimis Liberty Worth Repeating Thanksgiving Edition ______----********O********----______ THE FOUNDATION "That all the People may with united Hearts on that Day express a just Sense of His unmerited Favors: --Particularly in that it hath pleased Him, by His over ruling Providence to support us in a just and necessary War for the Defence of our Rights and Liberties; ...by defeating the Councils and evil Designs of our Enemies, and giving us Victory over their Troops --and by the Continuance of that Union among these States, which by his Blessing, will be their future Strength & Glory." --Samuel Adams on behalf of the Continental Congress, November 3, 1778, calling for a day of Thanksgiving during our Revolutionary War ______----********O********----______ INSIGHT "A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues." --Cicero ++ "The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart." --Plutarch ++ "Adore God. .. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence." -- Thomas Jefferson ++ "O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness." --William Shakespeare ++ "Pride slays thanksgiving, but an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves." --Henry Ward Beecher ++ "The Pilgrims came to America not to accumulate riches but to worship God, and the greatest wealth they left unborn generations was their heroic example of sacrifice that their souls might be free." --Harry Moyle Tippett ++ "Measured by the standards of men of their time, [the Pilgrims] were the humble of the earth. Measured by later accomplishments, they were the mighty. In appearance weak and persecuted they came -- rejected, despised -- an insignificant band; in reality strong and independent, a mighty host of whom the world was not worthy, destined to free mankind." --Calvin Coolidge ++ "We've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important: Why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those thirty seconds over Tokyo meant." --Ronald Reagan ______----********O********----______ GOOD NEWS "It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord...." (Psalm 92:1) ++ "I will praise God's name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving." (Psalm 69:30) ++ "Praise the LORD! Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. Who can utter the mighty acts of the LORD? Who can declare all His praise?" (Psalm 106:1-2) ++ "In everything give thanks." (1 Thessalonians 5:18) ++ "...Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ...." (Ephesians 5:18-20) ++ "Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations." (Psalm 100) ______----********O********----______ ICTUS IMPRIMIS "We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is 'good,' because it is good, if 'bad' because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country." --C.S. Lewis ______----********O********----______ LIBERTY "Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all? ...You have now in the field armies sufficient to repel the whole force of your enemies and their base and mercenary auxiliaries. The hearts of your soldiers beat high with the spirit of freedom; they are animated with the justice of their cause, and while they grasp their swords can look up to Heaven for assistance. Your adversaries are composed of wretches who laugh at the rights of humanity, who turn religion into derision.... Go on, then, in your generous enterprise with gratitude to Heaven for past success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory ... that these American States may never cease to be free and independent." --Samuel Adams ______----********O********----______ WORTH REPEATING "From our very beginnings, gratitude has been a part of our national character. Through the generations, our country has known its share of hardships. And we've been through some tough times, some testing moments during the last months. Yet, we've never lost sight of the blessings around us: the freedoms we enjoy, the people we love, and the many gifts of our prosperous land. On this holiday, we give thanks for our many blessings and for life itself. Thanksgiving reminds us that the greatest gifts don't come from the hands of man, but from the Maker of Heaven and Earth. This week American families will gather in that spirit. We will remember, too, those who approach the holidays with a burden of sadness. We think especially of families that recently lost loved ones, and of our men and women in the Armed Forces serving far away from home. This is a nation of many faiths. And this holiday season, we'll all be joined in prayer that those who mourn will find comfort; that those in dangers will find protection; and that God will continue to watch over the land we love. ...May God continue to bless America...." --President George W. Bush at this year's pardoning of the official Thanksgiving Turkey ______----********O********----______ THANKSGIVING Our tradition at The Federalist is to recount the origins of our Day of Thanksgiving, that we may celebrate the holiday as our forebears did, in humble acknowledgment and heartfelt gratitude for God's many blessings upon His people and our nation. We set aside, for this week, the mundane dispatches exposing certain adversaries of our liberties, that we may focus respectfully on the origins of our freedom. The celebration we now popularly regard as the "First Thanksgiving" was the Pilgrims' three-day feast celebrated in early November of 1621 (although a day of thanks in America was observed in Virginia at Cape Henry in 1607). The first Thanksgiving to God in the Calvinist tradition in Plymouth Colony was actually celebrated during the summer of 1623, when the colonists declared a Thanksgiving holiday after their crops were saved by much-needed rainfall. The Pilgrims left Plymouth, England, on September 6, 1620, sailing for a new world that offered the promise of both civil and religious liberty. For almost three months, 102 seafarers braved harsh elements to arrive off the coast of what is now Massachusetts, in late November of 1620. On December 11, prior to disembarking at Plymouth Rock, they signed the "Mayflower Compact," America's original document of civil government and the first to introduce self-government. While still anchored at Provincetown harbor, their Pastor John Robinson counseled, "You are become a body politic ... and are to have only them for your... governors which yourselves shall make choice of." The Pilgrims were Separatists, America's Calvinist Protestants, who rejected the institutional Church of England. They believed that the worship of God must originate in the inner man, and that corporate forms of worship prescribed by man interfered with the establishment of a true relationship with God. The Separatists used the term "church" to refer to the people, the Body of Christ, not to a building or institution. As their Pastor John Robinson said, "[When two or three are] gathered in the name of Christ by a covenant made to walk in all the way of God known unto them as a church ." Upon landing in America, the Pilgrims conducted a prayer service, then quickly turned to building shelters. Starvation and sickness during the ensuing New England winter killed almost half their population, but through prayer and hard work, with the assistance of their Indian friends, the Pilgrims reaped a rich harvest in the summer of 1621. Most of what we know about the Pilgrim Thanksgiving of 1621 comes from original accounts of the young colony's leaders, Governor William Bradford and Master Edward Winslow, in their own hand. "They begane now to gather in ye small harvest they had, and to fitte up their houses and dwellings against winter, being well recovered in health & strenght, and had all things in good plenty; for some were thus imployed in affairs abroad, others were excersised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish, of which yey tooke good store, of which every family had their portion. All ye somer ther was no wante. And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter aproached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degree). And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they took many, besids venison, &c. Besids they had aboute a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corne to yt proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained, but true reports." W.B. (William Bradford) The feast included foods suitable for a head table of honored guests, such as the chief men of the colony and Native leaders Massasoit ("Great Leader" also known as Ousamequin "Yellow Feather"), the sachem (chief) of Pokanoket (Pokanoket is the area at the head of Narragansett Bay). Venison, wild fowl, turkeys and Indian corn were the staples of the meal, which likely also included other food items known to have been aboard the Mayflower or available in Plymouth, such as spices, Dutch cheese, wild grapes, lobster, cod, native melons, pumpkin (pompion) and rabbit. By the mid-17th century, the custom of autumnal Thanksgivings was established throughout New England. Observance of Thanksgiving Festivals began to spread southward during the American Revolution, as the newly established Congress officially recognized the need to celebrate this holy day. The first national Thanksgiving Proclamation, issued by the revolutionary Continental Congress on November 1, 1777, expressed gratitude for the colonials' October victory over British General Burgoyne at Saratoga. Authored by Samuel Adams, the man the other Founders turned to for reasoned statements of liberties as God's blessings, its one sentence of 360 words read in part: "Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received...together with penitent confession of their sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor; and their humble and earnest supplications that it may please God through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance...it is therefore recommended...to set apart Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feeling of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor...acknowledging with gratitude their obligations to Him for benefits received....To prosper the means of religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth 'in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost'." On Wednesday, December 17th, General George Washington issued general orders including: "Tomorrow being the day set apart by the Honorable Congress for public Thanksgiving and Praise; and duty calling us devoutly to express our grateful acknowledgements to God for the manifold blessings he has granted us, the General directs that the army remain in its present quarters, and that the Chaplains perform divine service with their several Corps and Brigades. And earnestly exhorts, all officers and soldiers, whose absence is not indispensably necessary, to attend with reverence the solemnities of the day." Lt. Col. Henry Dearborn's diary entry for December 18th read, "This is Thanksgiving Day. God knows we have very little to keep it with, this being the third day we have been without flour or bread, and are living on a high, uncultivated hill, in huts and tents, lying on the cold ground. Upon the whole I think all we have to be thankful for is that we are alive and not in the grave with many of our friends." And Surgeon Albigence Waldo observed, "Mankind is never truly thankful for the benefits of life, until they have experienced the want of them." Cognizant of the need for a warring country's continuing grateful prayers to God, the Continental Congresses proclaimed yearly Thanksgiving days during the Revolutionary War, from 1777 to 1783. One-hundred and eighty years after the first day of thanksgiving in America, our Founding Fathers officially recognized the day by proclamation of the Constitutional government. Soon after adopting the Bill of Rights, a motion in Congress to initiate the proclamation of a national day of thanksgiving was approved. Congressional Record, September 25, 1789 "Mr. [Elias] Boudinot (who was the President of Congress during the American Revolution) said he could not think of letting the congressional session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining with one voice in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings He had poured down upon them. With this view, therefore, he would move the following resolution: Resolved, That a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States to request that he would 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.... "Mr. [Roger] Sherman (a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) justified the practice of thanksgiving on any signal event not only as a laudable one in itself, but as warranted by a number of precedents in Holy Writ....This example he thought worthy of a Christian imitation on the present occasion; and he would agree with the gentleman who moved the resolution....The question was put on the resolution and it was carried in the affirmative." This resolution was delivered to President George Washington, who readily agreed with its suggestion and put forth the following proclamation by his signature: A NATIONAL THANKSGIVING 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 and 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 in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquillity, 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 has been pleased to confer upon us. And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplication to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our national government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best. Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, AD 1789 George Washington After 1815, prophetically, there were no further annual proclamations of Thanksgiving until our citizens were in peril from the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln declared November 26, 1863, the last Thursday in November, a Day of Thanksgiving. In early July of 1863, there were some 50,000 American casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg, and President Lincoln traveled to the field of battle some four months afterward to deliver the "Gettysburg Address." Deeply moved by the sacrifice of these soldiers, Lincoln first committed his life to Christ while walking among the graves there. He later explained: "When I left Springfield [to become President] I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ." During that time of internal strife in the United States, and at that turning point in his own spiritual life, President Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving proclamation that was repeated for the following 75 years by subsequent presidents. The humble, grateful spirit attendant to those celebrations was expressed in such statements as this by Theodore Roosevelt: "No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with the gratitude to the Giver of good who has blessed us." However, in 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving Day one week earlier than had been tradition, to appease merchants who wanted more time to feed the growing pre-Christmas consumer frenzy. Folding to congressional pressure two years later, Roosevelt signed a resolution returning Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November, as Congress in 1941 permanently set the fourth Thursday of each November as our national day of Thanksgiving. Roosevelt's inclination to subsume Thanksgiving for commercial interests foretold much of the secular inversion of "thanksgiving" in which our autumns became a profusion of crass materialism in advance of that December day when we give thanks for the birth of Christ. But this year, we are again at war, as in our revolutionary days, and we are reminded we remain a nation deeply blessed by God. Thousands of our innocent countrymen were murdered in a span of moments, which has brought renewed mindfulness of the richness of simple blessings -- and an accurate perception of the depth and breadth of the bounties that God alone has bestowed upon us. Every new day to love our families and each breath in freedom are blessed gifts of our Heavenly Father. And too often even today, we forget to gratefully cherish the best of our national blessings, that liberty for which our forebears were willing to risk all comfort and security. As Abraham Lincoln noted so many years ago, "...[It is] announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord....It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people." On this Day of Thanksgiving, may God rest your heart and mind, may He bless and keep you and your family, and may He continue to extend His blessings upon our great nation, guiding us one and all by His Word. May He grant us courage and wisdom to match the tests of our age. May He impress upon us the spirit of our forefathers, their soul-deep craving for freedom, expressed with acknowledgement of their debts to God, as we strive to meet the challenges of our days. And let us always approach our Heavenly Father as our Founders did, with true thankfulness -- not just today, but every day -- not only in our triumphs, but also in our trials -- by acknowledging our utter dependence on Him for protection and guidance, for in Him we live and move and have our being. As our forebears remembered with every prayerful word of gratitude, even self-reliance is, at its root, reliance on Him: "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." --Philippians 4:6-7 -- PUBLIUS -- *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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