Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy
Thanksgiving! Who are you thankful for
this year? Spouses, family and friends traditionally head the list of most
folks. But there is one more person for whom we should all give thanks.
Sarah Hale was a
housewife in the nineteenth century when women were considered “chattel” in a
marriage. Chattel is property, the same as a horse, a house or a piece of
furniture. Women (and children) had very
few rights and were considered second-class citizens. Most could not vote, own property or decide
the fate of their own children.
Sarah had grown up
on a small farm in New Hampshire. Her father was a disabled veteran of the
Revolutionary War. She taught school to help out. One day, a lamb followed one
of her students to school. She wrote a poem about it called “Mary Had a Little
Lamb.”
Sarah’s marriage
was very happy, but her husband died young and she was left with five small
children. She took a job making hats to
support her family and continued to write poetry and stories at night. She
became the editor of a new magazine for women and published articles and
stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe and
Charles Dickens.
All this should
have been enough for any one woman, but Sarah was not satisfied with the world.
Every month in her magazine she wrote editorials advocating education for
girls, colleges for women, female doctors and for safe working conditions for
all women. She despised slavery but was not allowed to write politically in her
magazine.
That didn’t stop Sarah
from getting things done. She took to heart the old adage that “the pen is
mightier than the sword.” She published her articles and she wrote letters,
thousands of them. When Sarah fixed on an issue, she picked up her pen and
started writing to anyone she thought would be able to help.
Sarah really loved
Thanksgiving. It was an annual holiday in New Hampshire and the northeastern
United States, patterned after the first thanksgiving celebration of the
pilgrims. But it wasn’t a holiday in all the states and Sarah thought it should
be. So she picked up her pen.
She started
writing regularly to politicians throughout the states. She asked the readers
of her magazine to write too, and housewives all over the country responded. They
were pretty successful too. One by one, states began to declare a Thanksgiving
holiday. But Sarah wasn’t satisfied. She wanted it to be a national holiday
when everyone in the entire country would, on the same day, paused to give
thanks.
So she wrote to
the president, President Zachary Taylor to be precise. He said no. She waited
and wrote to the next president, Millard Fillmore. Again, the answer was
negative. So she wrote to Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan in
turn. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone stopped on the fourth
Thursday in November to give thanks? No luck.
Then came the
Civil War. The country was torn apart. Sarah wrote to the man trying to pull it
together. And finally, on October 3,
1863, Abraham Lincoln declared the fourth Thursday of November to be a national
day of thanksgiving.
With a strong will
and a ready pen, Sarah Hale helped establish a beloved holiday. One person can
change the world, a lesson for us all. So this holiday, after you pick up that
turkey leg, pick up your pen and write a letter about something you care about.
Send it to someone who can help and then sit back and give thanks.
Historic Details from Thank you, Sarah by
Laurie Halse Anderson.
