Lincoln at Thanksgiving

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American Spectator:

Lincoln at Thanksgiving
By Roger Kaplan on 11.24.10 @ 6:08AM

Too often we take good things for granted, Abraham Lincoln noted in October 1863, "bounties so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come." He suggested the last Thursday of November be set aside as a day of Thanksgiving.

Lincoln did not doubt for one moment the reasons for the turning, during the past summer, in the fortunes of the Union side. God was on the side of the constitutional republic which, while necessarily far from perfect, offered the best chance to spread and sustain the regime of liberty established less than a century earlier. The president pointed out, however, that this was a God at once wrathful and benevolent, capable of "dealing with us in anger for our sins" while "remembering mercy."

He said man is free to make his own bed. Faith alone and all that might be fine for Sunday sermons, but Lincoln thought more like John Winthrop than Cotton Mather. God is on the side of the big battalions, and that means men must raise and use them effectively. McClellan, Hooker, Pope, Meade had learned that their commander in chief understood that war must be left to the warriors, but responsibility for assessing their warrior virtues must fall upon the president.