“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die,
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up”
– Ecclesiastes 3:1-3
Thanksgiving has not always been the stand-alone national holiday we celebrate today. Born out of the agricultural calendar of American colonial life, fall days of thanksgiving were traditionally preceded by spring days of fasting and humiliation, days in which the American people would come together in prayer for a successful planting season and a bountiful harvest. In the fall, when the time of harvest had finally come, days of thanksgiving were proclaimed to celebrate what had been gathered. So, in order to fully appreciate Thanksgiving, we must understand it in light of how it was originally celebrated – as the harvest season’s counterpart to the sowing season’s day of fasting and prayer. Although they served distinct purposes, the days were both linked by the common theme of humility, a thread that runs through the history of our Nation and our University. During the fight for American independence, Princeton’s most prominent president, John Witherspoon, played a central role in the young nation’s most important days of national humility.
On Friday, May 16, 1776, Witherspoon stepped into the pulpit to deliver what would become the most well-known sermon of his career, “The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men.” The day had been set aside by John Hancock and the Continental Congress as “a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer,” a day when all American Christians would cease their labor and humbly repent of their “manifold sins.” In 1776, the occasion for the fast day was not, however, the season of planting. It was the season of revolution.
Almost a year earlier, the first shots of the Revolutionary War had been fired at Lexington and Concord, and the colonies’ future remained painfully uncertain. In less than two months, they would declare their independence from Great Britain as the United States of America. The seeds of independence had been sown, but it remained to be seen if they would bear the fruits of freedom. As Witherspoon described in his sermon, the country was “putting on the harness, and entering upon an important contest, the length of which it is impossible to foresee.”
Witherspoon discussed the extent to which the hand of Providence had pushed the country along the path towards independence. He beseeched his congregation, however, to “guard against the dangerous error of trusting in, or boasting of an arm of flesh.” In order for the nation to achieve its independence, “the Christian character, particularly the self-denial of the gospel” would have to “extend to [the People’s] whole deportment,” and they would have to exercise “humility of carriage, a restraint and moderation in all [their] desires.” To Witherspoon, humility was the key to victory.
Seven months later, after independence had been declared and the Continental Army had suffered a wave of staggering defeats, Witherspoon drafted a congressional resolution calling for the year’s second “Day of solemn Fasting and Humiliation” on December 11th. Just two weeks later, in the waning hours of Christmas Day, George Washington led his army across the Delaware River into Trenton, surprising a contingent of Hessian soldiers and achieving a monumental victory for the Patriot cause. A little over a week later, Washington and the Continental Army came to John Witherspoon’s doorstep, defeating the British once more at the Battle of Princeton. In the first year of the war, Witherspoon’s strategy of humility seemed to be working. However, there was still a long road ahead, and much American blood would have to be shed before the yoke of British rule could finally be thrown off.
In the following years, Congress would issue a number of similar springtime proclamations for days of public fasting, humiliation, and prayer. However, in October of 1777, Congress also began issuing proclamations for days of “solemn thanksgiving and praise,” during which “the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts” and approach the Almighty with “humble and earnest Supplication.” As in the earliest days of America’s history, the American wartime calendar was marked with these twin days of fasting and thanksgiving. Without a day of humiliation, there would not be a day of solemn gratitude.
Although the words “humility” and “humiliation” have distinct modern connotations, they both come from the same Latin root humus, meaning “ground” or “earth.” In their most literal sense, the two words denote lowering oneself to the ground, the basest possible state. In fact, farther back in etymological history, Latin humus and homo (from which we eventually get the word “human”) are descended from a common Proto-Indo-European root meaning “earth.” Ultimately, to be human is to be formed from the earth, and to be humble is to remind oneself of that fact. In his sermon, John Witherspoon reminds us that we ought to “humble us in the dust” when considering our history, the pages of which bear witness to human frailty, sinfulness, and hardship. When we celebrate Thanksgiving, we should remember that our great national tradition was born out of times of immense strife, times when American life was most difficult.
When President Abraham Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1863, officially marking the fourth Thursday in November as “a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise,” the country was embroiled in another fight for its survival. While the ink was drying on the President’s proclamation, the fields of Gettysburg were still wet with the blood of Union and Confederate soldiers. Many of the fallen were being reburied in the soldiers’ cemetery under construction on the battlefield, and the war was raging on. Almost two weeks earlier, the second deadliest battle of the war had been fought along Chickamauga Creek in North Georgia. North and south, east and west, the nation’s bloody wounds ran deep, and the soothing balm of peace was still two years away.
Although he acknowledged the ongoing war, Secretary William Seward, the author of the proclamation, also took time to recognize the good happening across the country. He mentioned the expansion of American territory, the vast material wealth unearthed across the country’s mines, and the plentiful harvests enjoyed by American farmers. In fact, he began the proclamation by celebrating a year “filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.” In the midst of the nation’s most horrific tragedy, Seward took the time to find the light in the midst of darkness, to officially recognize a day in which the American people could come together in prayer and humble supplication to the Lord.
Exactly a week before this first official Thanksgiving Day was celebrated, President Lincoln delivered his famous address at the dedication of Gettysburg National Cemetery. Standing upon the final earthen resting place of the Union dead, Lincoln declared that “we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground” any more than had been hallowed and consecrated by their blood. “It is for us the living,” Lincoln said, “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced,” and to ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” It is in the Gettysburg Address that Abraham Lincoln fully captured the spirit of the national holiday which would be celebrated a week later. Thanksgiving is about remembering the year’s blessings, many of which we enjoy because of the work of those who came before us. Gratitude is the chief conservative virtue, and gratitude cannot be expressed without humility. If we are to fully appreciate the importance of lasting traditions and institutions, we must first understand our own frailty. We must understand that we, too, must one day lie beneath the ground, returning to the soil and clay from which we were formed. Like the soldiers at Gettysburg, we will inevitably perish from the earth. However, if we humble ourselves before the past, we might hope to leave our mark by sustaining those institutions and traditions that have sustained us.
Although he lived to see the end of the war, President Lincoln did not live to see the Nation’s “new birth of freedom.” On the night of April 15, 1865, his life was stolen by an assassin’s bullet, extinguishing the light that had led the Nation through its darkest times. A month and a half after Lincoln’s death, President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation declaring “a day of humiliation and mourning” to remember the departed president’s life. As the People prepared to face the long road of Reconstruction, they returned to the time-honored practice of humbly petitioning the Lord for guidance.
Unlike President Lincoln, John Witherspoon lived to see the fruits of the national conflict in which he was involved. In 1777, a few months after drafting the December proclamation, Witherspoon joined the Continental Congress, where he would serve until 1784 and draft two national thanksgiving proclamations, one in 1781 and a second in 1782. Weeks after writing the 1782 proclamation, during which time the war was drawing to a close, Witherspoon returned to his pulpit in Princeton to preach a thanksgiving sermon. Centered around King David’s declaration in Psalm 3 that “salvation belongeth unto the Lord,” the sermon described the young nation’s deliverance from the threat of extinction. At the beginning, Witherspoon reminded his congregation where the nation began its journey towards independence, noting that nothing “could be more discouraging than our situation at the close of the year 1776.” Remembering the famous sermon he had delivered that fateful year, he now found himself on the other side of the contest whose end he admitted could not have predicted.
After recounting the war’s most consequential events, including “the surprise of the Hessians at Trenton, and the subsequent victory at Princeton,” Reverend Witherspoon concluded his sermon by describing the vital role of religious virtue in promoting free government, exclaiming that “civil liberty cannot be long preserved without virtue.” These virtues, among which Witherspoon defined as “piety, order, industry, [and] frugality,” could only be cultivated by “put[ting] honour upon modesty and self-denial.” Like his advice during the earliest years of the war, the key to preserving and fostering freedom was humility. At the beginning of the war, at the sowing season of freedom, Witherspoon had preached a fasting day sermon beseeching his congregation to humbly pray for Divine favor. At the end of the war, when the fruits of freedom were ready to be harvested, he preached a thanksgiving sermon expressing his gratitude for the nation’s success in the war effort. However, he also recognized the need to sow a new lot of seeds, the seeds of republican government and constitutional stability. The work of fighting had ceased, and the work of building had begun.
In the spirit of John Witherspoon, we must remember Thanksgiving as a day of humility. From dust we came, and to dust we shall return. Thus, we should give thanks for every breath and every moment we have on this earth, and we should use every breath and every moment to continue giving thanks.
I give thanks for my country and my University. I give thanks for the flag that hangs triumphantly above Nassau Hall, and I give thanks to the men and women who have laid down their lives so that the stars and stripes may fly. I give thanks to those who have come before me, and I am endlessly grateful for the institutions they have bequeathed to me and my generation. I give thanks to those who formed the Union, those who preserved it, and those who have fought to make it more perfect.
As the misguided continue in their prideful quests to topple the building blocks of American culture and history, whether it be the John Witherspoon statue at Princeton or Thanksgiving Day itself, I urge everyone to adopt the humble disposition that originally marked our national days of prayer and supplication. Just as our forefathers inevitably failed, so too will we fail. Just as they erred, we will err. And, just as they did wrong, we will do wrong. However, just as they built and sustained great things, we, too, can build and sustain great things. First, we must understand the finitude of our existence, and second, we must strive to create things which outlast it. Before we till the soil and make way for a new and bountiful harvest, we must remember our humble origins in the earth, the place to which we inevitably return.
(The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, oil on canvas by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, 1914)
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