Spirit of Indigenous America
The Awakening will bring forth the Rainbow Woman who will show the Warriors the path to the Crystal Cave. The messages of the ancients will be decoded using the seven keys and revealed to the Warriors by the Creator and each one will be gifted with powers to commune on many planes of existence.
The sacred Circle of Life turns slowly but inevitably back to the place where it began. Thus, we say 'all things that were, will be again.' On earth this is true, but this statement is not entirely correct - depending on ones perspective.
As each age passes, it cannot be reclaimed. We cannot go back in time. If we were to look from above at the Circle of Life it would appear as a gigantic spiral. Each age, or revolution of the Circle moves the next Circle to a plane in perfect concentric alignment with the last, but on higher level in the spiral.
Those souls who walk the path to higher awareness, consciousness and spirituality move with the spiral to the next plane. Those who do not, do not.
Now is the time we begin to prepare ourselves to become heritors of Mother Earth, to become Warriors of the Rainbow - for the sake of our children's children and all humanity. The road of the future is not red. It is a rainbow leading to the Creators grace by way of prayer, good works, faith and keeping the ancient traditions.
We must first unshackle ourselves from materialism and organized religious dogma and personal prejudice. There is nothing more important than becoming free in mind, body and soul from modern confusion in order to reach a higher plane of spirituality. Our very survival depends on it. To see the Light of the Rainbow we must quite our minds and feel inner peace and strength that flows as a river, one with nature and all creation.
To be chosen to walk the path to Light is not a decision made by some religious leader, a government agency or politician. It is a personal choice made by a mind and heart made free of religious guilt and idols of modern materialism. It is a decision made between you and the Creator.
©"Standing Bear Speaks", Story of Manataka by Lee Standing Bear Moore
Dreamtime story for you…
According to an old Native American legend, one day there was a big fire in the forest. All the animals fled in terror in all directions, because it was a very violent fire. Suddenly, the jaguar saw a hummingbird pass over his head, but in the opposite direction. The hummingbird flew towards the fire!
Whatever happened, he wouldn't stop. Moments later, the jaguar saw him pass again, this time in the same direction as the jaguar was walking. He could observe this coming and going until he decided to ask the bird about it because it seemed very bizarre behavior.
"What are you doing, hummingbird?" he asked.
"I am going to the lake," he answered, "I drink water with my beak and throw it on the fire to extinguish it." The jaguar laughed. 'Are you crazy? Do you really think that you can put out that big fire on your own with your very small beak?'
'No,' said the hummingbird, 'I know I can't. But the forest is my home. It feeds me, it shelters me and my family. I am very grateful for that. And I help the forest grow by pollinating its flowers. I am part of her and the forest is part of me. I know I can't put out the fire, but I must do my part.'
At that moment, the forest spirits, who listened to the hummingbird, were moved by the birdie and its devotion to the forest. And miraculously they sent a torrential downpour, which put an end to the great fire.
The Native American grandmothers would occasionally tell this story to their grandchildren, then conclude with, "Do you want to attract miracles into your life? Do your part."
Blessings,
Grandmother Flordemayo
Meet Raven Chacon, the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize for music
Raven Chacon's Voiceless Mass has won the Pulitzer Prize for music.
https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2022/05/10/1097760129/raven-chacon-pulitzer-prize-music?utm_term=music&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=nprmusic&fbclid=IwAR2WsBsH4_LHKakG0l38eOo2UnEzF8FGUFn5rDau-clNA-_8OW9KPHNIfOY
Wilma Mankiller Quarter to be released during June 6 ceremony
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. —On June 6, a limited number of the 2022 Wilma Mankiller Quarters will be released to the public in Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation.
The Cherokee Nation, BancFirst, U.S. Mint and Wilma Mankiller Trust are partnering to host the “Wilma Mankiller Quarter Release and Celebration” event.
The event honoring the life and work of the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation starts at 10 a.m. at the Cherokee National Capital Museum lawn and allows the public to purchase Wilma Mankiller Quarters following the event inside the museum.
“Traditionally women have had an important leadership role in our Indian Nations, so we are deeply honored for Wilma to be recognized along with the other great women selected to be represented on the quarter,” said Charlie Soap, Wilma’s widower, executive of her trust and a former Director of Community Programs during her term as Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
https://theonefeather.com/2022/05/18/wilma-mankiller-quarter-to-be-released-during-june-6-ceremony/?fbclid=IwAR28f9kzqIgqw6Am03C6wwSNenEb3AC3GUVGQCuKu5AhJ8zVercDdmXKxIA
It's a historic day!: ICWA is here to stay! ❤️
Today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act is a major victory for Native tribes, the best interests of children, and the future of Native American culture and heritage. With this decision, the court has upheld decades of precedent and landed on the right side of history.
We hope this decision will lay to rest the political attacks aimed at diminishing tribal sovereignty and creating instability throughout Indian law.
~ Cherokee Nation
What are they going to do? Thirst them to death? I'm sure they would if they could. The river runs along part of the reservation. I truly don't understand what the issue is here.
Supreme Court rules against Navajo Nation in water rights dispute
The tribe is blocked from pursuing a lawsuit claiming the federal government has a duty to assert the tribe’s water rights.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-rules-navajo-nation-water-rights-dispute-rcna83584
Supreme Court rules against Navajo Nation in water rights dispute
The tribe is blocked from pursuing a lawsuit claiming the federal government has a duty to assert the tribe’s water rights.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-rules-navajo-nation-water-rights-dispute-rcna83584
On this day in 1839, US President Andrew Jackson's policy to removing Native Americans from their ancestral lands to make way for settlers and speculators led to the infamous Trail of Tears.
The Cherokees of Georgia initially tried legal means to resist the policy and actually won their case in the US Supreme Court. However, President Jackson refused to acknowledge the judgement and 20,000 were eventually marched west at gunpoint.
A quarter of their number would perish on the journey.
Ref: https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears?fbclid=IwAR2-IZFpM2gwXXw31Axt6eXyjwtggfNHezukuEAu_s031iwwlOnwv6Tx9ac
Painting: Trail of Tears by Donald Vann Christmas.
#inspiritualservice #history #InHistory #TrailOfTears #nativeamerican #americanhistory
This celebrates and honors Native American peoples, commemorating their histories and cultures. The National Holiday was established in 2021, and will be celebrated the second Monday of October.
This movement began as counter-celebration of Columbus Day, which honors Christopher Columbus. Many ( myself included ) reject celebrating him, saying that he represents "the violent history of the colonization in the Western Hemisphere".
On a personal note, he didn't "discover" America - it was already here and inhabited by its indigenous culture. It's time to not only teach the truth of history, but to honor that truth.
Today, 14 U.S. states celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day and not Columbus Day, as well as the District of Columbia.
We're a tad late to this; however, our schedules had us playing tag! Welcome to November: National Native American Heritage Month and welcome back to my Diverse Advisory Council, Song Bird Grand Mother.
What started at the turn of the century as an effort to gain a day of recognition for the significant contributions the first Americans made to the establishment and growth of the U.S., has resulted in a whole month being designated for that purpose.
Beginning tomorrow, and weekly thereafter throughout the month, my Diverse Advisory Council member, Song Bird Grand Mother, will be guest posting in regard to the beliefs, practices, and sacred rituals of our Native American Ancestors and current brother and sister descendants.
Song Bird Grand Mother is a Modern-Day Medicine Woman and Shamanic Teacher. Born with an antenna tuned into the spiritual world and follows the ways of her ancestors who were Korean, Dine, and Toltec.
Having the great privilege to study with great teachers and masters of her lineages, she is a bridge between East and West; Spirit and Material; ancient and modern. She facilitates private and group healing ceremonies to help alleviate suffering, find solutions to problems, cultivate kindness & compassion, clear negative forces, and gain more wisdom.
Her specialties include Ancestral Healing, Business Consultation, Relationship Counseling, Career growth, Psychic Mediumship, & Expansion.
Song Bird is also a scholar and has a BA in Psychology, and a Masters of Humanities in Ancient Philosophy and Religion.
With over 20 years in the healing arts, she has traveled the world sharing sacred messages and transformational healing.
You can find Song Bird Grand Mother at the following links:
songbirdgrandmother.com
https://beacons.ai/songbirdgrandmother
Please help me welcome her return to the council by expressing deep gratitude and appreciation for her service.
#inspiritualservice #astrology #astrologer #NativeAmerican #NativeAmericanheritage #nativeamericanheritagemonth
Honoring Native American Heritage Month, Song Bird reminds us that when it comes to Mother Earth, "Give More than You Take".
“The earth is sacred because the sap that courses through the trees are the experiences and memories of the red man, the water that moves in the streams is the blood of the ancestors.” - Chief Seattle, Suquamish Nation
As we begin this month of Native American history month, I’d like to begin with the teaching that is foundational to every Indigenous person, and this is that we are here to take care of the Earth. To all Native people, this is our foundation. The deeply rooted knowing that the Earth is our Grand Mother, she is our home, she is our mother, she is our provider, and she must be honored and cared for.
We all have a sacred responsibility to care for her, to preserve her, and cherish her and to leave her as pristine as possible for the next seven generations and beyond. In Native American philosophy and culture, there is a deep connection to our sacred Grand Mother. Her water is the blood of our ancestors, her trees are the oxygen that we breathe, her dirt sacred and healing. We find our reverence and connection to the Great Spirit through our connection with the Earth.
To the First Nations, Grand Mother Earth is our sacred home, and it is our sacred obligation to take care of her, to only take what we need, to preserve her as she is, and to honor all that she gifts us. For without her grace, her beauty, and her deep love for us, we would not be here.
It is a sacred knowing that it is a great honor to live on this Earth. We are only given a short time to walk upon this sacred Earth, and we must do our best while we are here. We must be kind, and generous to the Earth, and we must honor all the ancestors who came before us, who laid the path for us to remember the sacred original teachings given to us.
In this time of change and transition, we must go back to the foundation, that the Earth is our Mother, she is here as a gentle loving gift, and she loves us so very much. When we step out of the endless thoughts of our head, and walk upon the Earth, no cell phones, no distractions, we can see and feel this great love and beauty. Our Grand Mother Earth wants nothing from us. She gives and gives, but in our modern world we just take and take. In Native culture, it is the person who gives the most that is most honored. There is an inherent knowing and practice that we must give back. It is better to give than to take. The worst thing to be in Native culture is “selfish,” and yet in our modern world, the most revered people are the ones who take the most and give the least.
This is completely opposite to Native American culture, for it is the person who gives the most that is revered the most. These are the chiefs and medicine people, they give of themselves, to heal and lead expecting nothing back. However, there must be sacred reciprocity. When we take, we must give.
For this month, I invite you to examine this principle in your own life and think about the ways you can give back to Mother Earth and your community.
In this time of transition and change, it is important that we all return to this foundation of giving more than we take from the Earth; and when we take, we must only take what we need. This is how we return to balance, this is how we return to peace, and this is how we preserve our Earth for the next seven generations and beyond.
~ Song Bird Grand Mother, ISS Diverse Advisory Council, Native American Shaman Songbirdgrandmother.com
#inspiritualservice #nativeamerican #Nativeamericanheritagemonth #NativeAmericanhistory
This week, in honor of Native American Heritage Month, Song Bird Grand Mother shares her wisdom about the Medicine Wheel.
Perhaps one of the most profound teachings in Native American culture is the teaching of the Medicine Wheel. For this article, I am not going to go into the directions and meanings, but rather the overall cosmology and gifts that the Medicine Wheel offers us. For without understanding the beauty, depth, and wisdom of this sacred circle, we cannot understand or truly appreciate this profound gift the ancestors gave us.
The Medicine Wheel is a simple, but profound teacher, philosophy, view of cosmology, and sacred healing tool that is endless with depth and wisdom. It is an ancient portal into the depth of humanity, the human experience, the different directions we must traverse, and the sacred connection we have to all living things seen and unseen. It is a powerful healing tool for all life, and it is said that wherever there is a Medicine Wheel it is a connected to all Medicine Wheels, especially the “Grand Mother Medicine Wheel” in Big Horn, Wyoming, which is the biggest and oldest Medicine Wheel in the world.
The Big Horn Medicine Wheel connects to all the “ley” lines and power spots across the globe, and the mystery is no one knows who built the Medicine Wheel. All tribes know of this sacred Medicine Wheel, but no tribe claims to have built it.
There is no end to the vast teachings and uses that the Medicine Wheel can be used in. It can fit into any institution from health care, education, spirituality, and law.
The Medicine Wheel appears to be a circle within a circle. The outer circle represents the circle of life, this sacred hoop that we are living in and within. There are the four sacred directions of East, South, West, and North, and within that sacred circle is the inner circle that represents the space within us. We as humans are always trying to balance and harmonize the sacred directions of our lives, and there are outer forces that attempt to take us out of the center and polarize us into one direction more than the others. When we go deeper into the teachings, we discover there are half turns to these directions. Directions such as South-East, and North-East. The directions that provide us those transitions needed to make it to the full directions.
Each direction gifts us an opportunity to look at ourselves, to transform, to learn, to grow, and most of all to balance our physical health, emotional well-being, our knowledge, and our spiritual growth.
The Medicine Wheel is always balanced. However, to be balanced in our “medicine,” we must stay in harmony, in our truth, in our authenticity. We must always remember to honor all the directions of our life. This includes our past, our present, and our future.
The Medicine Wheel speaks of the Cosmic forces that are above us, the Elemental forces that are below us. It teaches us that in order to overcome the winds of change we must embrace the lessons that can lead to blessings. The hardest aspect of this teaching is that we must not prefer to only have blessings over lessons. In life we will have both lessons and blessings. We cannot choose one over the other. Of course, we love the blessings, but how can we truly love and appreciate our blessings, without experiencing the lessons that gifted us those blessings?
In another way of understanding the Medicine Wheel, it represents all the seasons of life that we will experience from childhood to adolescence, to adulthood, to becoming an elder, and finally our transition into the world of the ancestors. When we understand the Medicine Wheel, we understand that every stage and chapter of our life has meaning, profound opportunity, healing, and sacredness. We understand that we are meant to start off young, and get old, and finally transcend this life. There is a place and time for everything, and we cannot “hold on” to the past, but instead embrace the cycles of change.
The Medicine Wheel gives a time and space for all the cycles of our lives, and organizes these different seasons with the cycles of nature.
For in the Indigenous ways, we are not separate from the Earth, but rather we are the Earth. We are born out of the Wombs of our Mothers, who was born through the Womb of her Mother, and so on and so forth. But, the ultimate womb we are born in and through is the womb of our Grand Mother Earth. The Earth who loves us, who teaches us, who nurtures us, and provides for us. In essence, we are the sacred Medicine Wheel, and in order to “walk in beauty,” we must remember that every stage is sacred, every breath is a gift, and that we walk together in this great circle of life.
Songbirdgrandmother.com
#inspiritualservice #NativeAmericans #nativeamerican #nativeamericanhistory #nativeamericaheritage
Pray with the Sunrise by Song Bird Grand Mother, ISS Diverse Advisory Council Member, Native American Shaman, In Spiritual Service.
The power of prayer is something universal to all Spirituality. In almost every spiritual practice, you will see the emphasis on prayer.
There are many ways to pray from kneeling, to candles, to offerings. Prayer is our way of asking the Universal forces to help us on our journey. In the Indigenous ways, prayer is how we are taught to start our day. As the sunrises, we too rise, and offer our sacred prayers. In the Indigenous ways, prayer is an offering. We can offer a sacred herb such as tobacco or corn pollen, we offer songs and prayer ties.
Prayers are not an asking or manifestation, but rather a sacred communion of gratitude and thanks. For no matter what struggle we are going through, no matter the obstacle, prayer is a thank you to the universal forces that have given us and continue to give us life.
Prayer is a giving rather than a taking, and it’s a reminder that this life is sacred. When we wake with the sunrise, we are honoring a new day, we are giving back to the Creator, we are supporting the sun as it gives us life, and we are taking time out of our day to honor the Spirit World. Prayer is a staple to our lives. Just as we feed our bodies food, we feed our spirit prayer.
The difference between going to a church and hearing a sermon and praying in the Indigenous manner is prayer is not about worshipping, but rather connecting and giving thanks. It is not about “obtaining,” but rather honoring. In prayer we give our hearts and minds, we sort out feelings and emotions, and we acknowledge the new day.
Prayer is sacred, intimate, and give us connection and power to nature and all her creation. When we sing an ancestral song, we are connecting to the ancestors who have walked this path before us and have paved the road with all their prayers. When we gift the sacred herbs, we are giving back that medicine to the Earth, and also connecting to all the ancestors before us who also offered their sacred medicine. When we rise with the sun, we are disciplining ourselves, and focusing our energies on the good work we are doing that day.
Prayer is the foundation of how we start and end our days, and in the old ways, prayer was done throughout the day. Offerings of tobacco or sacred herbs were given to the trees we passed; prayers were offered to the people we encountered. Prayer in the old ways wasn’t just a once-a-week practice, but an everyday, every breath practice.
Instead of being a plea, a hope, a manifestation, or a routine, prayer in the Indigenous cosmology is a sacred connection to the Great Spirit, ancestors, and spirit world. It empowers our mind, body, and heart. It renews our strength, it reminds us that prayer is not just words, but action. It humbles us to ask for help, and it is the foundation of survival. Our Grandmother’s prayers are still working in our lives. This is how strong prayer is.
When the Grandmother’s make the corn meal for the prayer offerings, they say the prayers of whoever will use that corn meal is already in that corn meal. The Grandmother’s grow the corn from ancient corn used for thousands of years, they do the break backing work to harvest, and then grind the corn in the traditional ways, and they distribute that corn meal to all those who they are guided to use that corn meal. The corn meal is sacred and filled with all the ancestors' prayers, the Grandmother’s prayers, and the Great Spirit’s love is placed into that corn.
Prayer is a reminder that whatever we are to do in this life requires hard work, sacrifice, and generosity. That Corn Meal made with so much love, tenderness, hard work, and sacrifice is a reminder that in the end, it is to be given away, and it is to be shared ,so that other’s may use it to pray and give of themselves, in the sacred and beautiful ways of the ancestors, prayer is a daily practice reminding us to stay focused on our path, and that there are many unseen forces here guiding us, protecting us, and helping us, all we have to do is connect.
Songbirdgrandmother.com
#inspiritualservice #nativeamerican #nativeamericanhistory #NativeAmericanHeritage #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth #nativeamericanheritagemonth2023
I'm going to put this one here today:
November 23, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 23, 2023
Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday…but not for the reasons we generally remember.
The Pilgrims and the Wampanoags did indeed share a harvest celebration together at Plymouth in fall 1621, but that moment got forgotten almost immediately, overwritten by the long history of the settlers’ attacks on their Indigenous neighbors.
In 1841 a book that reprinted the early diaries and letters from the Plymouth colony recovered the story of that three-day celebration in which ninety Indigenous Americans and the English settlers shared fowl and deer. This story of peace and goodwill among men who by the 1840s were more often enemies than not inspired Sarah Josepha Hale, who edited the popular women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, to think that a national celebration could ease similar tensions building between the slave-holding South and the free North. She lobbied for legislation to establish a day of national thanksgiving.
And then, on April 12, 1861, southern soldiers fired on Fort Sumter, a federal fort in Charleston Harbor, and the meaning of a holiday for giving thanks changed.
Southern leaders wanted to destroy the United States of America and create their own country, based not in the traditional American idea that “all men are created equal,” but rather in its opposite: that some men were better than others and had the right to enslave their neighbors. In the 1850s, convinced that society worked best if a few wealthy men ran it, southern leaders had bent the laws of the United States to their benefit, using it to protect enslavement above all.
In 1860, northerners elected Abraham Lincoln to the presidency to stop rich southern enslavers from taking over the government and using it to cement their own wealth and power. As soon as he was elected, southern leaders pulled their states out of the Union to set up their own country. After the firing on Fort Sumter, Lincoln and the fledgling Republican Party set out to end the slaveholders’ rebellion.
The early years of the war did not go well for the U.S. By the end of 1862, the armies still held, but people on the home front were losing faith. Leaders recognized the need both to acknowledge the suffering and to keep Americans loyal to the cause. In November and December, seventeen state governors declared state thanksgiving holidays.
New York governor Edwin Morgan’s widely reprinted proclamation about the holiday reflected that the previous year “is numbered among the dark periods of history, and its sorrowful records are graven on many hearthstones.” But this was nonetheless a time for giving thanks, he wrote, because “the precious blood shed in the cause of our country will hallow and strengthen our love and our reverence for it and its institutions…. Our Government and institutions placed in jeopardy have brought us to a more just appreciation of their value.”
The next year, Lincoln got ahead of the state proclamations. On July 15 he declared a national day of Thanksgiving, and the relief in his proclamation was almost palpable. After two years of disasters, the Union army was finally winning. Bloody, yes; battered, yes; but winning. At Gettysburg in early July, Union troops had sent Confederates reeling back southward. Then, on July 4, Vicksburg had finally fallen to U. S. Grant’s army. The military tide was turning.
President Lincoln set Thursday, August 6, 1863, for the national day of Thanksgiving. On that day, ministers across the country listed the signal victories of the U.S. Army and Navy in the past year and reassured their congregations that it was only a matter of time until the United States government put down the southern rebellion. Their predictions acknowledged the dead and reinforced the idea that their sacrifice had not been in vain.
In October 1863, President Lincoln declared a second national day of Thanksgiving. In the past year, he declared, the nation had been blessed.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, he wrote, Americans had maintained their laws and their institutions and had kept foreign countries from meddling with their nation. They had paid for the war as they went, refusing to permit the destruction to cripple the economy. Instead, as they funded the war, they had also advanced farming, industry, mining, and shipping. Immigrants had poured into the country to replace men lost on the battlefield, and the economy was booming. And Lincoln had recently promised that the government would end slavery once and for all. The country, he predicted, “with a large increase of freedom,” would survive, stronger and more prosperous than ever. The president invited Americans “in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands” to observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving.
In 1863, November’s last Thursday fell on the 26th. On November 19, Lincoln delivered an address at the dedication of a national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He reached back to the Declaration of Independence for the principles on which he called for Americans to rebuild the severed nation:
”Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Lincoln urged the crowd to take up the torch those who fought at Gettysburg had laid down. He called for them to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The following year, Lincoln proclaimed another day of Thanksgiving, this time congratulating Americans that God had favored them not only with immigration but also with the emancipation of formerly enslaved people. “Moreover,” Lincoln wrote, “He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.”
In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.
And in 1865, at least, they won.
Source: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-23-2023
November 23, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
NOV 23, 2023
Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday…but not for the reasons we generally remember.
The Pilgrims and the Wampanoags did indeed share a harvest celebration together at Plymouth in fall 1621, but that moment got forgotten almost immediately, overwritten by the long history of the settlers’ attacks on their Indigenous neighbors.
In 1841 a book that reprinted the early diaries and letters from the Plymouth colony recovered the story of that three-day celebration in which ninety Indigenous Americans and the English settlers shared fowl and deer. This story of peace and goodwill among men who by the 1840s were more often enemies than not inspired Sarah Josepha Hale, who edited the popular women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, to think that a national celebration could ease similar tensions building between the slave-holding South and the free North. She lobbied for legislation to establish a day of national thanksgiving.
And then, on April 12, 1861, southern soldiers fired on Fort Sumter, a federal fort in Charleston Harbor, and the meaning of a holiday for giving thanks changed.
Southern leaders wanted to destroy the United States of America and create their own country, based not in the traditional American idea that “all men are created equal,” but rather in its opposite: that some men were better than others and had the right to enslave their neighbors. In the 1850s, convinced that society worked best if a few wealthy men ran it, southern leaders had bent the laws of the United States to their benefit, using it to protect enslavement above all.
In 1860, northerners elected Abraham Lincoln to the presidency to stop rich southern enslavers from taking over the government and using it to cement their own wealth and power. As soon as he was elected, southern leaders pulled their states out of the Union to set up their own country. After the firing on Fort Sumter, Lincoln and the fledgling Republican Party set out to end the slaveholders’ rebellion.
The early years of the war did not go well for the U.S. By the end of 1862, the armies still held, but people on the home front were losing faith. Leaders recognized the need both to acknowledge the suffering and to keep Americans loyal to the cause. In November and December, seventeen state governors declared state thanksgiving holidays.
New York governor Edwin Morgan’s widely reprinted proclamation about the holiday reflected that the previous year “is numbered among the dark periods of history, and its sorrowful records are graven on many hearthstones.” But this was nonetheless a time for giving thanks, he wrote, because “the precious blood shed in the cause of our country will hallow and strengthen our love and our reverence for it and its institutions…. Our Government and institutions placed in jeopardy have brought us to a more just appreciation of their value.”
The next year, Lincoln got ahead of the state proclamations. On July 15 he declared a national day of Thanksgiving, and the relief in his proclamation was almost palpable. After two years of disasters, the Union army was finally winning. Bloody, yes; battered, yes; but winning. At Gettysburg in early July, Union troops had sent Confederates reeling back southward. Then, on July 4, Vicksburg had finally fallen to U. S. Grant’s army. The military tide was turning.
President Lincoln set Thursday, August 6, 1863, for the national day of Thanksgiving. On that day, ministers across the country listed the signal victories of the U.S. Army and Navy in the past year and reassured their congregations that it was only a matter of time until the United States government put down the southern rebellion. Their predictions acknowledged the dead and reinforced the idea that their sacrifice had not been in vain.
In October 1863, President Lincoln declared a second national day of Thanksgiving. In the past year, he declared, the nation had been blessed.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, he wrote, Americans had maintained their laws and their institutions and had kept foreign countries from meddling with their nation. They had paid for the war as they went, refusing to permit the destruction to cripple the economy. Instead, as they funded the war, they had also advanced farming, industry, mining, and shipping. Immigrants had poured into the country to replace men lost on the battlefield, and the economy was booming. And Lincoln had recently promised that the government would end slavery once and for all. The country, he predicted, “with a large increase of freedom,” would survive, stronger and more prosperous than ever. The president invited Americans “in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands” to observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving.
In 1863, November’s last Thursday fell on the 26th. On November 19, Lincoln delivered an address at the dedication of a national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He reached back to the Declaration of Independence for the principles on which he called for Americans to rebuild the severed nation:
”Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Lincoln urged the crowd to take up the torch those who fought at Gettysburg had laid down. He called for them to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The following year, Lincoln proclaimed another day of Thanksgiving, this time congratulating Americans that God had favored them not only with immigration but also with the emancipation of formerly enslaved people. “Moreover,” Lincoln wrote, “He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.”
In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.
And in 1865, at least, they won.
Source: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-23-2023
