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.
