In today’s media-driven political environment, virtually every action by any political leader is questioned and viewed with suspicion.  Today, I read that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger officially proclaimed Thursday, November 26 as Thanksgiving.  Well, now it’s official.  That’s leadership.

But what of the leadership that it took to declare the first national day of thanksgiving?

Our nation was in the midst of a tragic Civil War, lives were being given and lost each and every day and men and women struggled to provide for their families. Yet this man, whom many called a buffoon, proclaimed we pause and give thanks?

To read many of Lincoln’s words today is to read poetry in prose. To read the original Thanksgiving proclamation, written by Lincoln’s own hand and which called upon our nation to give thanks in the midst of the most trying of times, is to read leadership.  Certainly, Lincoln was prompted by a personal letter from and a series of editorials by influential Ladies’ Journal editor Sarah Hale to proclaim a national Thanksgiving Day. But to call upon our nation to recognize God-given blessings even while we faced stress and distress as a nation and as families, demonstrates Lincoln’s leadership skills rightly applied.

For your review, Lincoln’s proclamation is posted below. Happy Thanksgiving, and may God continue to bless you and your family.

Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

– Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, October 3, 1863