Thanksgiving’s Origin as a National Holiday

November 27, 2025

As a national holiday, Thanksgiving originated as war propaganda.

It was Abe Lincoln in November 1863 who made Thanksgiving a national holiday.  The Union Army under Grant had finally won a battle at Shiloh, and the victory called for celebration.

American Indians, or native Americans as some prefer, give no thanks for the Europeans’ arrival or for Lincoln’s victory over the Confederacy.  No sooner than Sherman and Sheridan had raped and pillaged the Confederacy than they were sicced on the Plains Indians,  Ralph K. Andrist chronicles their extermination in his book, The Long Death:  The Last Days of the Plains Indian.

The invasion of the Confederate States of America by the Union has been incorrectly labeled a “civil war” by court historians.  It is completely clear that there was no civil war.  A civil war is when contesting sides fight for the control of the government.  The Confederacy had its own government in Richmond and no interest in the one in Washington.  It was the North that invaded the South by sending an army into Virginia where the Union army was defeated at the Battle of Bull Run.

I have often wondered how corrupt historians got away with calling a war that began with an invasion of one country by another a “civil war.”

I have also wondered how the same corrupt historians got away with falsely claiming that the war was fought for the purpose of freeing black people from slavery when Abe Lincoln made it completely clear that he initiated the war in order to preserve the union.

I have also wondered how the liberal/left and black studies departments in universities got away with demonizing white Americans for slavery when the greatest casualties in American history were the consequence of a four year war allegedly fought to free black slaves. Altogether 594,000 white men died in a war allegedly fought to free the slaves.  Where, then, does the charge of white racism come from?

I have also wondered why the Union preferred one people of color over another.  Allegedly, the Union suffered 642,427 dead and wounded in a four year effort to free the black slaves, and then immediately on the cessation of the war began with merciless attacks a war on the Plains Indians.

I have also wondered why Lincoln’s army was called the Union Army if it was not fighting to preserve the Union but to free the slaves.  Why wasn’t it called the Black Freedom Army?

The facts are so clear and simple.  Yet they are denied.  Slavery existed for thousands of years prior to the colonization of the New World.  The South did not create slavery.  The South inherited slavery as the agricultural labor force.  The black slaves in America were enslaved by the black king of Dahomey who sold the excess as slaves.  It was the main business of his kingdom.

All races and ethnicities suffered enslavement.  It was President Thomas Jefferson who had to send the US Marines to the Shores of Tripoli in order to stop North Africans from enslaving US citizens.

When one looks at the total mess historians have made of the War of Northern Invasion and slavery, one cannot help being sympathetic with Henry Ford’s dictum that “history is bunk.”

The Best of Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week’s first outside columnist, columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, contributor to the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and columnist for the main French and Italian newspapers, and for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles. He served in numerous academic appointments in US universities and was  appointed to the William E. Simon Chair for Political Economy at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies where his colleagues were Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James R. Schlesinger (one of his former professors), and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Thomas Moorer. His article, “How the Law Was Lost,” was published in the January 1999 Cardozo Law Review.