We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving yesterday and continue to enjoy spending time with friends and family today. While we at The Heritage Foundation enjoy our holiday, we invite you to read President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation below. The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature …
Today we celebrate Memorial Day, and in a special Heritage in Focus podcast, The Heritage Foundation’s vice president of American Studies, Matt Spalding, fills us in on the history and importance of this day. “If you want to get a sense of what Memorial Day is, the great poet is Lincoln,” Spalding says. “Lincoln was able to connect the death of soldiers to what America means.” As we honor our soldiers, it’s important to recall the timeless principles that have enabled us to enjoy our freedoms and flourish as a …
The Civil War began one hundred and fifty years ago today, when Confederate soldiers fired on the Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Tensions were high in the months prior to the battle at Fort Sumter, as President Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office and seven southern states seceded. To discuss the Civil War, we sat down with Mackubin T. Owens, professor at the Naval War College and expert in military history. Q: Professor Owens, what was the primary cause of the Civil War? Owens: The proximate cause of …
On February 12, America will celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s 202nd birthday, but will conservatives celebrate his legacy? Lincoln is a pivotal figure in American history, yet some conservatives are wary of him. Lincoln, the Left proclaims and the Right fears, is the father of big government. Conservatives shouldn’t be fooled. If big government means a permanently large and growing federal budget and a vast civil service (see William Voegeli’s Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State), then Lincoln may deny paternity for both. As Allen Guelzo explains, while the federal budget indeed …
We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving Holiday yesterday and continue to enjoy spending time with friends and family today. The Heritage Foundation will be posting on The Foundry throughout this Friday so please check back frequently. Till then, do enjoy President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation below. The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been …
February 12th marks the 201st birthday of Abraham Lincoln. There is much that we can learn today from this great champion of the Constitution and of the principles of the American founding. This is especially true today, when our founding principles are under relentless attack. Even in Lincoln’s time, these principles were “denied, and evaded, with no small show of success,” as Lincoln himself put it . Lincoln dedicated all of his public life to the preservation of these principles, and we should aspire to live up to his example. …
Thanksgiving was not formally made a federal holiday until 1941. However, it has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November annually since President Abraham Lincoln delivered the address below in 1863. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at The Heritage Foundation. The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so …
As the world honors Abraham Lincoln on the 200th anniversary of his birth, it’s worth recalling one of the less well-remembered moments of his career: his letter on January 19, 1863 to “the Workingmen of Manchester,” responding to their earlier address and resolutions in support of the North. This was one of Lincoln’s earliest public letters, an art form he used to increasing effect throughout the remainder of the Civil War. The Manchester letter, though not as well known as his later letter on Clement Vallandigham, the ‘wily agitator’ and …
On February 12, 2009, The Heritage Foundation celebrates the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Our sixteenth President was one of our history’s greatest statesmen, and continues to serve as an example of the power of conservative principles to change America for the better. Abraham Lincoln’s firm and unyielding opposition to slavery grew out of his dedication to the principles of our Founding Fathers, principles which have been under assault by the Left for decades. The Left seeks to reinterpret Lincoln as the father of the centralized administrative state that was …
On this date (November 19) in 1863, Abraham Lincoln gave perhaps the greatest speech in American History, the Gettysburg Address. The text of the speech is short, less than 300 words, a fitting reminder to contemporary politicians that, sometimes, the most succinct speeches are the most meaningful. Perhaps the brevity of Lincoln’s remarks can be explained by the only inaccuracy in the Gettysburg Address: namely the assertion that “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here….” In Lincoln’s view, it was the actions of the brave soldiers who fought rather …
