This Thanksgiving, Give Thanks for The Principles that Bind Us Together

Americans have been taught to identify Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims and Native Americans joining, despite their differences, for a shared feast at Plymouth Colony. The symbolic nature of this historical gathering is powerful and should never become lost on us as a nation. However, in this divided political climate, just weeks removed from a heated midterm election, the country would also be remiss to forget the reason Thanksgiving became a national holiday in the first place: to awaken a sense of America's shared history and principles during the most tense and divided of times.

While George Washington originally called for an official "day of public thanksgiving and prayer," his vision did not become a reality until President Abraham Lincoln saw it through almost 75 years later in hopes of calming and uniting the nation during the Civil War.

In 1863, two years into the terrible war, the country's fate hung in the balance. Would it continue to be, as Lincoln put it in the Gettysburg Address, a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal?" While the bloody Battle of Gettysburg may have been one of the military turning points of the Civil War, it did not mark a turning point in the hearts and minds of much of the American citizenry, which continued fighting with weapons and words.