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 ...

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.

On Nov. 26, 1789, President George Washington proclaimed the day “a day for thanksgiving and prayer.” The United States, under the U.S. Constitution, was not even a year old at this point, and ...

[Editor’s note: On Oct. 3, 1789, little more than five months after being sworn in as the nation’s first president, George Washington issued a proclamation calling for America’s first official ...

The Father of His Country: George Washington And then, thank goodness, there is George Washington, who in 1789 issued the First Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation in these words: ...

PD Editorial: For Thanksgiving, President Washington’s proclamation George Washington issued the first presidential proclamation of Thanksgiving Day in 1789.

As president, Thomas Jefferson intentionally axed a long American tradition of thanksgiving.

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 ...

How George Washington used his first Thanksgiving as president to unite a new country On Nov. 26, 1789, Washington called on the people to hold their new country together in the face of forces ...

For his first presidential Thanksgiving, George Washington aimed to pull his country together in the face of the many internal divisions that could yank it apart.

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.