Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day in 1863.
On October 3, 1863, during the American Civil War, Lincoln issued Presidential Proclamation 106. He invited Americans to observe the last Thursday of November as a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise.” The first observance under his proclamation took place on November 26, 1863.
The idea had been promoted for decades by Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, who urged presidents to establish a shared national Thanksgiving. George Washington had proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving in 1789, but such observances were occasional rather than an annual tradition. Lincoln’s proclamation created the continuing pattern associated with modern Thanksgiving.
A common mix-up is calling 1863 the year Thanksgiving became a federal holiday in its present legal form. Lincoln established the national observance, but Congress did not fix Thanksgiving as a federal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November until 1941, during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency.