Washington sets Thursday, November 26, as a day of thanksgiving
Five months into his presidency, George Washington was still defining the new government, one unwritten custom at a time. On October 3, 1789, he proclaimed Thursday, November 26, 1789, a day of public thanksgiving, asking Americans to acknowledge "the many signal favors of Almighty God." The idea was not new. Washington had called for a similar day in December 1777 after the victory at Saratoga, and the Continental Congress had done the same during the Revolution. What was new was doing it as President of the United States, under the Constitution, from the temporary capital in New York.
Washington's proclamation gave the presidency a power the Constitution never spelled out: the ability to declare a day of national observance. No law bound his successors to repeat it, and for decades most didn't follow a fixed schedule, but the precedent held. When Sarah Josepha Hale finally pushed Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving an annual national holiday in 1863, she was asking him to make permanent what Washington had only done once, on his own authority.
QDid every early president follow Washington's lead on Thanksgiving proclamations?
No. Thomas Jefferson refused to issue any, on principle. He believed a federal religious proclamation crossed the line separating church and state that he had spent his career defending, and he held to that position throughout both of his terms. John Adams and James Madison, by contrast, both issued their own national thanksgiving proclamations, but Jefferson's refusal in between meant the custom was not applied consistently across the early administrations. There was no unbroken chain from Washington to Lincoln, just a habit that different presidents picked up and set down as they saw fit over the next seventy years.
QWhat exact wording did Washington use to describe the reason for giving thanks?
Washington's proclamation asked Americans to acknowledge "the many signal favors of Almighty God," phrasing that framed the new nation's survival as providential rather than simply political. The language was deliberately broad and nonsectarian, fitting a government that included citizens of many denominations and no established church. It was also brief: Washington's proclamation ran a fraction of the length of the elaborate, multi-paragraph thanksgiving proclamations later presidents would issue.
QWhere was Washington physically governing from when he signed the proclamation?
New York City, which served as the nation's first capital under the Constitution before the government moved to Philadelphia in 1790 and finally to Washington, D.C., a decade later. Washington had been inaugurated there just five months earlier, on April 30, 1789, meaning his entire early presidency, including this proclamation, operated out of temporary quarters in a city that never served as the capital again. The building where he took his oath, Federal Hall, stood only blocks from where he likely signed the thanksgiving proclamation that October.
