Posts Tagged ‘Abraham Lincoln’
Special Holiday Extra: a day of “sincere and humble thanks”…
from xkcd (where, while Randall deals with illness in his family, Jeffrey Rowland [and others] have stepped in)
From Scenarios and Strategy:
On October 3, 1789, President George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789 as an official holiday of “sincere and humble thanks,” and the United States celebrated its first Thanksgiving under its new Constitution.
click image to see enlargement at source; click here to see original manuscript at the National Archives
The holiday became traditional, at least in New England, but was celebrated each year at different times in the late Fall. Then in September of 1863, a magazine editor named Sarah Josepha Hale wrote President Abraham Lincoln, urging him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” Lincoln responded:
Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day
October 3, 1863
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart…
click image to see enlargement at the National Archive; click here for transcription
(According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. Indeed, on October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles noted in his diary that he had complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.)
Enough said…
source: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez
Tired of those monotonous meetings, those chattering conversations, the cacophony of the city? Mask it all with SimplyNoise— a “flat sound” generator– and choose among white, pink or brown/red noise…
As we seek auditory Zen, we might open our ears selectively in the memory that it was on this date in 1858 that Abraham Lincoln gave his “House Divided” speech in Springfield, Illinois. Playing off of a quote from the Bible (Matthew 12:25, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”), then Senatorial candidate Lincoln prophesied that
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
During the War of 1812, Abigail Adams had written a similar line in a letter from to Mercy Otis Warren– a variation that in its way is as timely today as Lincoln’s:
…A house divided upon itself- and upon that foundation do our enemies build their hopes of subduing us.
Putting Mr. Lincoln to work…
“The place for people to share things they’re willing to do for $5”: Fiverr… (Also worth checking out: the source of the image above, Vandalize George.)
As we try to divine whether we’re the victims of inflation or deflation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1636 that Utrecht University was founded. It’s alumni include scholar Perizonius , mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, biographer James Boswell, zoologist Frans de Waal, and Nobel Laureates (Physics) Tjalling Charles Koopmans and Wilhelm Röntgen… and it’s still going strong.
Snapped shots…
A collection of… well, strange old photos, from the remarkable Black and WTF. Consider, for example:
or…
or…
More– much more– at Black and WTF.
As we revisit our family albums, we might recall that it was on this date in 1860 that Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the office. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and, famously, Northern Democrat and Illinois senator Stephen Douglas.
Matthew Brady’s 1864 photo of Lincoln reading to his son Tad
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