Message from JMC President Hans Zeiger

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On This Thanksgiving
Message from JMC President, Hans Zeiger
Dear friends,

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

As one of our country’s most cherished traditions, Thanksgiving is a special opportunity to give thanks for the “blessings of liberty.”

While Native Americans and the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth colony as early as 1621, the United States’ first “Day of National Thanksgiving” originated in President George Washington’s first presidential proclamation.

On October 3, 1789, Washington proclaimed that Americans show their gratitude for “the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty” they had experienced since the American Revolution. In addition, Washington reminded Americans to remember the “peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness,” most importantly, the United States Constitution.

Thanksgiving celebrations soon became an annual staple within American homes in the decades that followed.

While presidents after Washington proclaimed days of thanks, historians agree that Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation represented the “true beginning” of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. That year, Lincoln encouraged Americans in the grips of civil war “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise.”

Lincoln’s proclamation found its fullest expression in his immortal words at Gettysburg, delivered a week before Thanksgiving, 1863. There Lincoln inspired Americans to devote themselves to ensuring that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Washington and Lincoln

Gratitude for exceptional ideals drove both men: Washington’s gratitude came from hardships Americans endured while founding the country, and Lincoln’s gratitude came from hardships Americans endured while preserving the nation.

In our own time, we can be grateful to live in a nation defined by equality for all and the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One way that we can share this gratitude is by ensuring our young people learn about the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and our history of triumphs and failures in realizing those founding ideals.

At the Jack Miller Center, we are deeply grateful for the many scholars, civics teachers, and citizens who are doing what they can to ensure that the rising generation learns about the meaning of America.

We wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving. And thank you for your friendship and support.

Sincerely,
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About the Jack Miller Center

The Jack Miller Center is a nationwide network of political scholars, historians, and civics teachers who seek to pass along the meaning of America to the next generation.

We have three strategies to pursue this mission:
* Build and sustain a community of scholars in the fields of American political thought and history;
* Restore the teaching of American citizenship in K-12 schools that centers on the country’s history, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and other foundational texts in the American tradition; and
* Partner with organizations and philanthropists to advance civic education that is grounded in America’s founding principles and history.

We are building a movement of educators and citizens to advance the principles of equality, liberty, and opportunity that lie at the heart of the American political tradition.

www.jackmillercenter.org

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The Jack Miller Center
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484-436-2060

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3 Bala Plaza West, Suite 401, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004

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