The first national Thanksgiving under the Constitution was held
On this day · 26 November 1789
On November 26, 1789, Americans observed the first nationwide day of thanks proclaimed by President George Washington.
On November 26, 1789, the young United States paused for its first national day of thanksgiving under the new Constitution. The date had been set weeks earlier, on October 3, 1789, when President George Washington issued a proclamation at the request of Congress.
Washington named “Thursday the 26th day of November” a day for Americans to give thanks for, among other things, peace, their hard-won liberties, and “the peaceable and rational manner” in which a new government had been formed.
This was not the continent’s first thanksgiving—colonies and communities had held such days for generations—but it was the first proclaimed for the whole nation at once.
Washington marked it by attending services and donating beer and food to imprisoned debtors in New York City.
It would take until 1863, under Lincoln, for Thanksgiving to become a fixed annual holiday. Washington’s 1789 proclamation set the precedent.
Sources & references
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