TR’s Manifesto on America’s Destiny, a Year After Returning with his Rough Riders,  America’s 1st Foray into International Leadership

Many consider Thanksgiving our most treasured national holiday. The first national Thanksgiving Proclamations were those issued by the Continental Congress between 1777 and 1784,  and both national and state proclamations were issued sporadically thereafter. However,  the idea of making a regular national holiday as we know it today was conceived years later by Sarah Josepha Hale,  editor of the prominent magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book,  who engaged in a campaign to establish it. She recommended this to Abraham Lincoln in 1861,  and on November 28,  1861,  he signed a proclamation saying,  “I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States,  and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands,  to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next,  as a day of Thanksgiving.” He established a precedent that was followed by his successor,  Andrew Johnson,  who declared a Thanksgiving for December 7,  1865. Johnson gave government employees the day off,  thus making the day a legal holiday. The practice established by Lincoln and Johnson has been adhered to by every subsequent president. In New York,  governors began issuing Thanksgiving Proclamations in 1817.  

In 1898 Roosevelt led the most famous of all the units in the Spanish-American War,  the Rough Riders. In time,  they would became the stuff of legend. News of their exploits dominated the newspaper headlines during the conflict,  and the men (and foremost their leader Roosevelt) were widely acclaimed upon their return home from Cuba in September 1898. TR immediatly announced his candidacy for governor of New York,  and less than two months later he was elected. He was sworn in on January 1,  1899. Later in the year he had his first chance to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation. Such proclamations are commonly formulaic; they commence by reciting the blessings that have been extended to America (or the citizens of one of its states),  and then call on the people to give thanks to God by celebrating the last Thursday in November as a day of Thanksgiving. But Theodore Roosevelt had no intention of following precedent; he intended to issue an order that would constitute a clarion call for the United States to meet its great destiny,  a destiny he would have so much to do with shaping.

Proclamation Order Signed as Governor of New York,  Albany,  October 30,  1899,  proclaiming November 30th as a day of Thanksgiving and prayer,  and finishing with his vision for the future. “…Under Providence each man has been permitted to live his life and do his work as seemed best to him,  provided only that he in no wise interferred with the liberty and well being of his fellows…The people of state are not merely New Yorkers; they are Americans,  and as such they have shared in the blessings that have come upon America during the year that has gone by. It is right that we should give thanks for the prosperity that has come to the nation; and for the way in which this great people in the first flush of its might manhood is moving forward to meet its destiny,  and to do without flinching every duty with which that destiny brings it face to face.” This must be the most unusual,  non-formulaic Thanksgiving Proclamation, one clearly dictated by Roosevelt himself,  showing all the dynamism and leadership that he would bring to the White House just two years later.