Excerpt from Thanksgiving Proclamation: Proclamations; Excerpts From Newspapers and Other Sources From the Files of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection Although seasons of thanksgiving and prayer had been observed in America from the very earliest days of its settlement, it was not until the year 1863, that the last Thursday in November was set apart as a national Thanksgiving Day to be observed annually.. We assume it would be of interest to learn just what people had to be thankful for in the midst of a great civil war. Some excerpts from contemporary papers will allow us to catch the spirit of the first National Thanksgiving Day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.