Debate in Congress about issueing proclamations for days of prayer.

Sickel, H.S.J. Thanksgiving: Its Source, Philosophy, and History with all National Proclamations and Analytical Study Thereof. (Philadelphia: International Printing Co., 1940). pp 24-25


With this historical review, we find Thanksgiving established as a national custom, to be practiced by succeeding generations, but a lapse in observance followed for six years, and nothing concerning the festival is heard or recorded until September 25th, I789, when it is revived by Elias Boudinot, a member of the National Congress, from the State of New Jersey. This Congress was functioning under the new Constitution of the United States of America.

On this date, Mr. Boudinot in a speech, exalted as exemplary, laboring under a conviction of , patriotic gratitude and religious inspiration, presented a resolution, to be concurred in by the Senate, reading: "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, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.

One would hardly believe that the adoption of such a resolution would have had any opposition, but it did. In the debate which followed, Aedanus Burke, of South Carolina, believed that such an Act would cause us "to mimick European customs when they made a mere mockery of thanksgiving".

Thomas Tudor Tucker, also from South Carolina, thought Congress should mind its own business. He declared : "Why should the President tell the people to do something they might not have a mind to do. . . . How do we know the people are thankful for a Constitution that hasn't been tried out very long? . . . We do not yet know but they may have reason to be dis- satisfied with the effects it has already produced. . . . But whether this be so or not, it is a business with which Congress should have nothing to do. It is a religious matter and as such, is proscribed to us. If a day of thanksgiving must take place, let it be done by the authority of the States; they know best what reason their constituents have to be pleased with the establishment of this Constitution."

Mr. Boudinot was "sorry to hear arguments drawn from abuse of a good thing, against the use of it". Mr. Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, by the training and experience of a New Englander, naturally spoke in justification of the practice of thanksgiving and held that, "On any signal event, not only as a laudable one in itself, but as warranted by a number of precedents in Holy Writ; for instance, the solemn thanksgiving and rejoicing which took place in the time of Solomon, after the building of the Temple, was a case in point."

The resolution was finally adopted by both Houses, and transmitted to the President, George Washington, who, at New York City, on October 3d, I78g, issued the First National Thanks- giving Proclamation, setting apart Thursday, November 26th, I780, as the day for the people to assemble in their respective places of Worship and give thanks to God, among other things, for the favorable conclusion of the late War; for the adoption of the new Constitution, our Government, and the Constitution of the Several States.