Which U.S. president issued the 1863 proclamation that made Thanksgiving a national holiday?

Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 proclamation that established Thanksgiving as a regular national holiday.

On October 3, 1863, during the American Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed that the nation should observe Thanksgiving on the final Thursday of November. The holiday was celebrated on November 26 that year. His proclamation called for gratitude despite the war and encouraged Americans to acknowledge the country’s blessings and hardships.

The campaign for a national Thanksgiving had been promoted for years by writer and editor Sarah Josepha Hale, who repeatedly urged presidents to create a fixed national observance. Lincoln’s action turned earlier, occasional presidential thanksgiving proclamations into a recurring national tradition.

Lincoln did not invent the idea of Thanksgiving. George Washington had issued a national thanksgiving proclamation in 1789, and the Continental Congress had called for thanksgiving observances during the Revolutionary War. Nor did the 1863 proclamation immediately create the modern federal holiday by statute; Congress fixed Thanksgiving’s legal date as the fourth Thursday of November in 1941.