And the same from the Rockies. Hope you enjoy a special day.

Happy Thanksgiving from Cincy!  And, my sister is bringing the mincemeat pie...love that stuff!

Just got back from Columbus after Thanksgiving with my wife's family.  Hope everyone had a great T-day.   I, too, enjoy the camaraderie of this board.  Great place to hang out and discuss everything OHIO.  

Here, for those interested, is President Abraham Lincoln's proclamation that set Thanksgiving as a national holiday.  Before that it had been celebrated in many states -- mainly in New England -- as a state holiday. 

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards 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, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

This just isn't true.  While, the North was able to continue some of the construction (internal improvements, as they were called then), the war affected nearly everyone in the country, except in some very isolated pockets. By some estimates the North had a total of 2.1 million men under arms and the South a little over one million.  Practically every family had  one or more men in the Army, or another branch of the service.  Nearly every issue of the typical local paper had long lists of the men killed or wounded or who died in camp of disease.  These were read and wept over in private and at community gathers and churches were having funerals of young men at an alarming rate.  In terms of local men, one estimate was that about one our of every four men of military age in Southeastern Ohio was with Sherman on the March to the Sea.  The war was not some abstraction "way down in Alabamy" as one song put it.  This war was part of the warp and woof of their times and their lives.

The North had several major problems in prosecuting the war:

1.  Most of the battles were fought in the South where the rebels had more familiarity with the terrain and could maneuver better and more incentive in "defending their homeland." 

2.  Early in the war the southern generals were just better.

3.  Gen McClellan missed opportunity after opportunity to crush the rebel army early.  He always over-estimated the strength of the rebel forces he was facing.  Given that in 1864 he ran against Lincoln on a "peace" ticket one wonders where his heart really was in those earlier battles.

4.  It took time to retool the northern industries to supply the full needs of the military. 

5.  Most people in the North underestimated what it would take to crush the rebellion.  Most southerners underestimated the will of the North to prevent secession. 

So, if the North had realized from the beginning that a few 100 thousand 90-day men would be insufficient and had immediately instituted a draft and raised a two million man army and moved South with this host it's possible the war could have been over more quickly.  But, the northern populace wasn't ready for this kind of massive move at that early stage and Lincoln could have easily found himself impeached and thrown out of office. 

In short, while the late Shelby Foote was a good historian and ofter very entertaining, he sometimes said things in a hyperbolic manner that could lead one a listener to take away a vastly oversimplified view of the war.