(Author’s note: The second book collection of my columns, Bruce’s History Lessons - the Second Five Years (2006 – 20011) is now available in book form and in e-book form (download to either Kindle or Kindle IPad).  Click on the above links to go to either version on Amazon.  My first five-year collection of columns, Bruce’s History Lessons – The First Five Years (2001 – 2006) is also available at Amazon.  Both books can also be purchased via the book links on the homepage of my website, historylessons.net.)

Because President Tom Jefferson thought observing a Thanksgiving holiday smacked of Royalism (he never explained why), he reversed George Washington’s proclamation making the last Thursday of November an official day of thanks.  There matters stood for 60 years until Sarah Hale, a Northern writer and editor, mounted a campaign that finally convinced President Abraham Lincoln to restore Thanksgiving. He did so in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War.

“The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies,” his Thanksgiving proclamation began. “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 even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.”

To say that ol’ Abe was putting an optimistic spin on matters would be a huge understatement. The year 1863 began with the Union army reeling from its disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg, and as the year progressed, and Union defeats piled up, Lincoln would fire one general after another — having already replaced McClellan with Burnside, he would replace Burnside with Hooker, Hooker with Meade — and still not find a commander equal to the Confederacy’s Robert E. Lee.  What’s more, a troop shortage forced Lincoln to institute a military draft, which was so hated it sparked major riots in cities from Boston to New York.

Politically things were no better. Criticism grew over Lincoln’s handling of the war, especially among Northern Democrats with whom Lincoln had always had a shaky relationship. One of their leaders had even urged Union troops to desert the army, forcing Lincoln to arrest him, and Lincoln’s own chances of being re-elected in 1864 looked so slim, even a member of his own Cabinet considered running against him.

For all of that, Lincoln must have sensed that better days were ahead, something he helped ensure by making Ulysses S. Grant commander of the Union’s western armies right after he issued the Thanksgiving Proclamation. And sure enough, by Thanksgiving of 1864, Grant — now commander of all Union armies — was driving Lee back to Richmond, General Sherman had captured Atlanta, and Lincoln had won re-election.  The fortunes of war had turned, finally giving Lincoln a real reason to be thankful.

As for Sarah Hall, the woman who campaigned so hard to restore the Thanksgiving holiday, it turns out that she was also the author of the popular children’s poem — now song — “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”  It is not known whether, at her first Thanksgiving dinner, Ms. Hall also had a little lamb.

You say nothing beats experience?  Then how do you explain the fact that this week (Nov. 6) in 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected president?

After all, one candidate vying against Lincoln for the Republican nomination that year was William Seward, the revered former governor and current senator of the nation’s most important state, New York.  Salmon Chase, another serious contender, also had been a United States senator and was a popular two-term governor of Ohio.

Simon Cameron, a wealthy businessman, former newspaper editor, adjutant general and senator from Pennsylvania also wanted the Republican nomination that year, as did John McLean of the U.S. Supreme Court, who, in 1856, had lost that nomination to John C. Fremont, another former senator (from California), a seasoned military leader, and one of the most famous pioneer explorers in America.  In 1860, Fremont too wanted another shot at the presidency.

On the Democratic side, the leading candidate was Stephen Douglas — known as the “Little Giant” — and among the most famous and powerful men ever to serve in the United States Senate.  Another Democratic candidate was John Breckenridge, the sitting vice president of the United States.

Bringing up the rear of this crowded field was Abe Lincoln.  To assess his chances of winning his party’s nomination, let alone the presidency, it would be easier to describe what Lincoln was not.  He was not, nor had he ever been, a United States senator, a governor, a celebrated military commander or Supreme Court justice.  He had never even won a statewide election, let alone a national one. He had no widespread fame, as did Fremont, nor national following, as did Douglas. The historian William Lee Miller once wrote that by most measures Lincoln “was the least qualified man ever elected, perhaps ever nominated, by a major party.”

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In the midst of the Civil War, Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune, published an editorial rebuking President Abraham Lincoln for vacillating on the issue of emancipating the slaves. An abolitionist and staunch supporter of preserving the “union”—meaning a unified country—Greeley was nevertheless not shy about criticizing Lincoln’s conduct of the war.

Lincoln’s reply to Greeley, written this week (Aug. 22) in 1862, was perhaps the most famous letter he ever wrote, especially the following excerpt:  “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

As it happened, Lincoln had already written a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation that he would issue on January 1, 1863, because he was finally convinced that it would help the North win the war and preserve the union. As his letter makes clear, the nation’s preservation was his first priority.

But why? Why was saving the union so paramount that even an issue as morally repugnant as slavery was a secondary concern? The answer is that Lincoln felt he was not only preserving the nation for his generation of Americans, but also for generations not yet born, both in America and around the world.

“The last best hope of earth,” he called our country, and he had a point.  For one thing, America in 1862 was the world’s only successful democratic republic, and attempts to duplicate it in Europe and next door in Latin America had repeatedly failed.  For another, the world’s monarchies and dictatorships openly rooted against America’s survival and took gleeful delight in the threat to the union (and to democracy) that the Civil War posed.  As Lincoln well understood, the success or failure of the “American experiment” would set a global precedent.  Should the union fail, then the world would be convinced that “government of the people, by the people and for the people” was not destined to be a fixture on earth.  But should it succeed, it would give hope to people everywhere that representative government could work.

Lincoln was willing to countenance slavery during the war because he believed that once the war was won and the union preserved, slavery in America would end.  At that point, America would stand as a beacon to freedom and as living proof that “the people” could govern themselves without any help from kings, queens or dictators.

He was, as usual, right.