A Second Helping of Civil War Thanksgiving

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, ate lots of turkey/tofurkey, and survived the chaos of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping. Since, we did not post our regular week in review last Friday, we thought we would give you a second helping of all the great Civil War Thanksgiving inspired blog posts from last week. After all, the best part of Thanksgiving is going back for seconds!

On The Front Line…
Last week, we posted several primary accounts from Thanksgiving 1861 (including contemporary images): “The Customs of Our Puritan Fathers,” “Thanksgiving Sensations,” “fleshing our teeth into a secesh gobbler,” “Thankfully Keeping Thanksgiving Day,” and “Thanksgiving is over.” We also posted a copy of Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation.

Around the Blogosphere…
Over on Emerging Civil War, Meg Thompson posted an entertaining piece entitled “Lincoln Pardons Turkey, But Not General Porter!” Several other bloggers discussed local celebrations of Thanksgiving throughout November 1861. On All Not So Quiet Along the Potomac, Ron Baumgarten discussed “Thanksgiving 1861 in Washington and the Camps Across the Potomac” and Civil War Washington, D.C. described “Thanksgiving in Washington, 1861” while Rich MacAlpine recounted “Thanksgiving 1861, And in NY A Respectable Place for Ladies to Dine on Oysters,” and The Civil War and Northwest Wisconsin delineated “1861 November 28: Thanksgiving in Wisconsin.” Like The Front Line, some blogs posted first hand accounts of Civil War Thanksgiving celebrations. These included “Thanksgiving—Horatio Nelson Taft” on Daily Observations from the Civil War, “A Civil War Thanksgiving” from the On the Street blog, “Thanksgiving 1861 – Observance” on the Civil War Blog, “A Thanksgiving Letter from an African American Civil War Soldier“ on The World Turn’d Upside Down, and “November 28, 1861: Thanksgiving” on Seven Score and Ten. Lastly, the Teaching the Civil War podcast had a special episode about Lincoln’s 1863 Proclamation:

Hopefully, this summary will “stuff” your heads with anecdotes of Civil War Thanksgiving. Starting next week, The Front Line will be paying homage to Christmas 1861 and running a series parallel to Issue 2’s “Voices” section. In a four-part series that will post every Monday in December, we will share first-hand accounts of Christmas 1861 by the Civil War soldiers who experienced them.