Encouraging Dallasites to Observe Thanksgiving — 1874
by Paula Bosse
by Paula Bosse
After the Civil War (and even before) many (if not all) Southern states refused to celebrate Thanksgiving, as many felt it was nothing more than a politicized “Yankee abolitionist holiday.” But by 1874, Southerners — and Texans — were finally willing to give it a go.
A letter to the editor of the Dallas Daily Herald that year encouraged the people of Dallas to observe the holiday — suggesting that it was a patriotic (rather than a political) thing to do:
Our southern people have not been in the habit of observing [Thanksgiving] since the late war, for causes known to themselves and the nation. But now […] it becomes us to specially observe this day long set apart by our people for feasting, thanksgiving and prayer. By so doing we will give evidence of our faith in permanent government, and rebuke the idea of disloyalty to the union of the states.
Dallas Daily Herald, Nov. 26, 1874 (click for larger image)
Richard Coke, the governor of Texas, proclaimed Thursday, November 26, 1874 as a day of thanksgiving, noting that “Neither plague, pestilence nor famine has visited our beloved State,” and that, hey, things were actually going pretty well:
Dallas Daily Herald, Nov. 21, 1874
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
[…] The celebration of Thanksgiving was a hard, hard sell to the Southern states. Read my previous post about why it wasn’t until Reconstruction that Texans finally decided to participate in the national holiday, here. […]
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[…] For more on how Thanksgiving finally came to be celebrated in Texas in 1874 (it took a long time for the Southern states to agree to celebrate what many thought was a “Yankee abolitionist holiday”), see my post “Encouraging Dallasites to Observe Thanksgiving — 1874,” here. […]
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