He urged the people of the United States to celebrate “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” But Washington believed that particular Thanksgiving in 1789 was a crucial occasion.

Our first president used the holiday to unite a divided nation. So can we. Washington’s Thanksgiving and Ours On Thursday, Nov. 26, 1789, George Washington woke early. Assisted by his enslaved ...

Washington was not the only U.S. president to issue proclamations around the November holiday. In 1815, President James Madison called for a national day of prayer and thanksgiving, and in 1863 ...

This Thanksgiving, we should set aside time not only for prayer as a grateful nation, a practice George Washington established in 1789 and Abraham Lincoln renewed during the Civil War, but to ...

By Lincoln’s day, George Washington had already provided us with a Thanksgiving proclamation that today, nearly two and a half centuries later, still stands as a Thank You that a nation can put ...

Overlooked, however, was an earlier proclamation by Washington on Oct. 3, 1789, in the first year of his presidency, when he proclaimed a national day of public thanksgiving and prayer.

On this day in 1789, President George Washington issued his first proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving for Thursday, Nov. 26, in honor of the establishment of the new Constitution, which ...

The Thanksgiving story most of us hear is about friendship and unity. And that's what Sarah Josepha Hale had on her mind when she sat down to write a letter to President Lincoln in 1863, deep into ...

President George Bush and Shannon Duffy, 8, of Fairfax, Va., look over a Thanksgiving turkey presented to the president at the White House in Washington by the National Turkey Foundation, Nov. 18 ...

President George Washington aimed to unify the country with his first Thanksgiving message. Getty Images Maurizio Valsania, Università di Torino On Thursday, Nov. 26, 1789, George Washington woke ...