Saturday, November 22, 2014

November 24 1864---Thee Roosevelt and the Union League Club Give Thanks To The Troops



NOVEMBER 24, 1864:      

The second annual Thanksgiving holiday:         

 On this day the Union League Club of New York provided Thanksgiving dinner to every soldier and sailor in the Union Armed Forces. Led by Theodore “Thee” Roosevelt (whose wife Mittie was sister to the same James Dunwody Bulloch who commissioned the C.S.S. ALABAMA, and whose son would someday be President of the United States) the Union League Club of New York solicited donations from citizens throughout the North and distributed shipments of makings for the feast to as many regiments and vessels as they could reach.






The main challenge the Union League Club had to meet was to organize the donations while at the same time keeping the food from spoiling during transport (by ship or railway) throughout the country and across the seas. It was a prodigious task: 373,586 pounds of poultry (mostly turkey of course) was shipped, along with "an enormous quantity of cakes, doughnuts, gingerbread, pickles, preserved fruits, apples, vegetables, and all the other things which go to make up a Northern Thanksgiving Dinner." Amazingly, most of the units received their food and it was in edible condition. Thee Roosevelt declared the effort a "grand success."


Writing to his wife from his post in Key West, Major Benjamin Lincoln, 2nd United States Infantry U.S.C.T., described the Thanksgiving dinner he’d had:  
 

Thanksgiving night we had a first rate supper which Mrs. French & Weeks prepared. Some most excellent cakes and other things which I did not think possible to manufacture on this Island. We had a very pleasant time after supper all our officers were together and had a social chat.


I wished you were here but then wishes did not bring you, so I shall have to remain content until you can come, whenever that happy event may be.



Many sermons are given in the North, all on the subjects of “victory,” “gratitude” and “winning God’s war.”


While the Northerners feasted, units of Sherman’s army raided farmsteads, stealing food and wares from the hapless folk of Georgia. It was decidedly not a day of Thanksgiving in the South.





















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