Nov/Dec (Volume 17, Issue 6)

 

By Michael Swanger

 

The conventions of polite behavior during family gatherings on Thanksgiving Day dictate that conversations about hot-button topics such as politics are to be discarded like turkey giblets before sitting down at the dinner table. Then again, some folks crave things that others find distasteful, claiming they add flavor to the festivities. It depends on what you can stomach. 

 

History teaches us that in spite of the extraordinarily divided time in which we live that hope is not lost. This is not the first time our nation has been divided politically, nor will it be the last. The proof is in the number of precedents that are often overlooked by the public and our elected officials … the worst of which stand out because the deep division dominated our politics like it does today. 

 

Perhaps there is no greater example of such seemingly insuperable division as the American Civil War, 1861-1865. Still, during the first bleak year of the war Iowa’s Gov. Samuel Kirkwood wrote the following in his Thanksgiving Proclamation on Nov. 13, 1861.

 

“With civil war raging in our midst, the banner of rebellion along all our southern border, hostile armies marching to the conflict, and wails of mourning already swelling from thousands of stricken hearts and households, that we can still recognize manifold causes of gratitude and acknowledge His kindly providence and confidently place our trust in His hand to control this storm for the nation’s good, may entitle us to the renewed favor of Him who doeth all things well.”

 

Kirkwood, presumably, meant every word of it. By the time that he wrote it Thanksgiving Day had become a combined religious and social celebration after the Pilgrims in 1623 at Plymouth Plantation, Mass., prayed for rain in the midst of a drought that was destroying their crops and rain fell a few days later. As a young boy growing up as an anti-slavery Democrat in Maryland he witnessed the horrible reality of the slave trade in Washington, D.C. Shortly after moving to Iowa in 1855, he changed his political affiliation and spoke at the first meeting of the Iowa Republican Party. He would help to establish the party’s political dominance in Iowa for decades after being elected to the Iowa Senate from 1856 to 1859. 

 

Additionally, Kirkwood was a strong supporter of President Abraham Lincoln and fortified the Union cause by arming and equipping more than 76,000 Iowans for the Civil War during his first term as Iowa’s governor from 1860 to 1864. He would resume the governorship from 1876 to 1877 before resigning his role to begin a second term in the U.S. Senate. 

 

During Kirkwood’s second term as governor, he signed another Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1876. In it he proclaimed Nov. 30 “As a day of thanksgiving and praise.” Furthermore, he wrote, “Let us, therefore, on that day assemble at our customary places of public worship, or gather around the family circle, and banish from our hearts all malice and uncharitableness, dedicate ourselves anew to charity and good works …”

 

Each year on the last Thursday of November we post Kirkwood’s 1876 executive order on our social media pages with the hope that on that day we can find common ground in our collective gratitude and not focus on our political differences. 

 

Food for thought on Thanksgiving Day … and every day.

 

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