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Franklin Pierce, the only president New Hampshire has ever produced, turns 213 years young on Thursday, November 23 (Thanksgiving Day). Military officials and elementary school students turned out to celebrate a day early at Pierce's grave in Concord, New Hampshire.
On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln reinvigorated the tradition of the Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation. Lincoln selected a date precisely 74 years after President George Washington had inaugurated the Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 3, 1789. Like the first President, Lincoln designated the last Thursday in November as a day for Americans to give thanks.
Unlike the founding father, Lincoln was unable to speak of the immeasurable blessing of a nation at peace. Instead, he expressed gratitude for the continued development of the nation in the throes of a Civil War. "No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hands worked out these great things," Lincoln wrote about the country's rapid material progress. "They are gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy."