 10 seconds from now. Can I start? Are we ready to start? Hello from the National Archives. My name is Missy McNat, and I'm an Education Specialist in Washington, D.C. And welcome to the National Archives Comes Alive Young Learners Program. We will offer the Young Learners Program once a month through the spring. And to find the dates and times of future programs, you can go on the National Archives archives.gov website and check events or check the National Archives Facebook page. This morning, we will meet President Abraham Lincoln, portrayed by Bob Gleason of the American Historical Theater. President Lincoln will explain to us how Thanksgiving became a national holiday that all Americans celebrate on the same day. And there's a great historical coincidence, and I love historical coincidences. And that is that in 1863 for the first national Thanksgiving, it was held on Thursday, November 26th. And in this year, in 2020, our Thanksgiving is on Thursday, November 26th. If you'd like to learn more about the 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation and related documents, you can go to docsteach.org. And at the end of the program, we will share the link for the featured activity connected to this program. So at the end of President Lincoln's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. And you are welcome to type in your questions into the YouTube chat during the presentation. And we have a National Archives staff member who is monitoring that. And please let us know where you're watching from as well. So this program is brought to you by the National Archives Education Team, the National Archives, and the National Archives Foundation. And now it is my great pleasure to introduce to you perhaps the most beloved and famous of American presidents, President Abraham Lincoln. There you are. Well, as you may know, I set aside several hours every week to visit with people. Anyone from anywhere who wants to drop by, I'd like to know what people are thinking. So we're feeling. And if there's anything I can do to help or any problems I can solve, sometimes people want to complain about something I said and did. Sometimes they want to thank me for doing my job. I call these sessions my public opinion bids. And well, anybody can come by. It's important for me to know what real people think. Not just Congress or the newspapers. I am the president of the people, by the people, and for the people. And the people are always welcome here. They get to know me, and I get to know them. One of the things they know about me is that I like to tell stories. Sometimes it's easier to explain a complicated thing by telling a simple story. And that's what I'm going to do now. But you probably know me because of the Gettysburg Address of the Emancipation Proclamation. Everybody's heard of the Emancipation Proclamation, which announced our intention to do away with slavery in this country. But there's another proclamation you might not know about. It's Proclamation number 106, and it was issued on the 3rd of October of 1863. And it announced that Thanksgiving Day will be celebrated in this country as a national holiday. I signed that proclamation, and I had the great seal of the United States stamped on it. But to be honest, I cannot take all the credit. I did not invent Thanksgiving. Although I am an inventor, most people don't know that I am the only president who holds a patent for an invention. I invented this. Now, I bet you can't guess what it is, so I'll tell you. This is my device, my system for refloating boats that have got stuck on sandbars in river. In my younger days, I worked on a cargo boat on the Mississippi River. And if you got stuck on a sandbar, you were going to be there for days until it rained enough to raise the water level and float your boat. So these poles, you see, they were used to pump up airbags on the sides of the boat, to raise it up and then let it float free. But nobody ever built one. So I never found out whether it would work or not. But you can still see the model over at the patent office if you're curious. Now, you may ask yourself, what does this story have to do with Thanksgiving? Well, absolutely nothing. But I wanted to make it clear that I don't go around taking credit for other people's ideas. And the idea for Thanksgiving is very old. It goes back centuries in different countries, celebrating things like military victories, the birth of the royal baby for the end of an epidemic. It's been celebrated in different places, different ties for different reasons. The early Spanish settlers in Fort Augustine, Florida, they celebrated the Thanksgiving in 1565. There are reports of Thanksgiving celebration in Virginia in 1619. And of course, the famous pilgrim Thanksgiving was celebrated up in Massachusetts in 1621. Now, harvest festivals have been celebrated all over the world ever since people started growing their own food. I grew up on a small farm in Indiana. And everything we ate, we either grew ourselves or we found growing in the woods. We fished for fish in the streams. Men hunted wild game in the forests. But folks kept pigs for ham and bacon and sausage or a cow for milk, cheese and butter. There were also chickens for eggs. And if one of the chickens stopped laying eggs, there'd be fried chicken and chicken soup. When the harvest was bountiful in fall, the folks would get together and have a little harvest festival to be planted to eat. And somebody always brought along a fiddle so that the young folks could sing and dance. But as time went by, some people wished there was a particular day, the same day every year to celebrate Thanksgiving for all the things that life has given us. Now, one of the people who had that idea was a young lady named Sarah Josepha Hale. Sarah Josepha Hale. Never heard of her? Well, you should and for a good reason. And one of those reasons is, well, she, you may find this surprising. Everybody knows my Gettysburg address. And they know that it starts out four score and seven years ago. But most people can't recite much further than that. Sarah Josepha Hale wrote something that everybody knows, including yourselves. And it goes, Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. It followed her to school one day, which was against the rule. It made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school. Now, Sarah wrote that when she was a young schoolteacher, one of her students, a girl named Mary, came to school one day, followed by her pet lamb. And Sarah wrote a poem about it. Now, Sarah Josepha Hale was born in New Hampshire in 1788. Just about a year before President George Washington declared a day of thanksgiving to celebrate our new nation. Her father had fought in the Continental Army with George Washington. And both her parents believed in equal education for boys and girls. And though Sarah was mostly educated at home, she became a schoolteacher. She married a young man, a lawyer named David Hale. And together they had five children, three boys, two girls, before David died. And Sarah was only 34. While raising her children, she became an author. She published a book of poetry and a novel called Northwood, which was one of the first books to explain slavery in this country. Now, that book was an immediate success and Sarah was invited to move to Boston to edit a ladies magazine. And so she did for eight years. In a spare time, she started a foundation to provide help for the families of sailors who had been lost at sea. Having lost her own husband, she sympathized with young widows with children who raised. She also raised money to build the Longer Hill Monument and to help prepare George Washington's Mount Vernon, which was in sad shape by then, and she helped found Vassar College. But one day, a magazine publisher in Philadelphia was so eager to have her work for him that he bought the ladies magazine, rock, stock and barrel, just so she could be his editor. And so she was for the next 40 years. She made Gordy's Ladies Book, the most popular, successful and influential magazine in the country. Now, in 1846, she began her campaign for a National Thanksgiving Day. She wrote the President, President Taylor, President Fillmore, President Pierce, President Buchanan, and got no results. Then she wrote to me, to Abraham Lincoln, sir, permit me as an address of the Ladies Book to request a few minutes of your precious time while laying before you a subject of deep interest to myself and as I trust, even to the President of our Republic. This subject is to have the day of our annual Thanksgiving May the National and Sixth Union Festival. Well, in 1863, we were engaged in a great civil war. Very, very large battles were being fought to put an end to slavery and make sure that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Anyone would think that I was too busy trying to keep the country going, to concern myself with a new idea for a national holiday. But having just achieved great victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, it began to look as if the tide was turning and maybe the end of the war wasn't so far away. And I thought maybe people needed a special day to remember all the good things we were fighting for and how to appreciate the idea of a, well, what's the word I'm looking for? Oh, that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. That's a good line, I'm probably gonna use that. Well, at the time I was too busy writing my Gettysburg address. So I asked my secretary of state, William Seward, to write the proclamation for me to sign. Now, Secretary Seward is a fine man and a great writer and he produced a very moving and uplifted document that I was proud to sign my name to. That was October the third, 1863. And on November the 26th, just seven days after I delivered the Gettysburg address, the first national Thanksgiving Day was celebrated. Now, how you celebrate Thanksgiving probably depends on the customs where you live. Now, Sarah Joseph the Hale in her book talks about a Thanksgiving memory while the celebration in her house when she was a child. It featured roast turkey, red dressing, winter squash, boiled potatoes and onions, buttermilk biscuits with fresh churned butter, cranberry relish, ginger cake with whipped cream, coffee, tea and raspberry shrug, which is a kind of fruit punch. Now, my wife, she grew up on a very, very fancy mansion in Kentucky and I like to tell me of the big parties they would have with every kind of treat you can imagine. Then I would tell her about the time my family sat down to give thanks for a humble meal of boiled potatoes. Rich or poor, feast or famine, people celebrated. Some folks stayed in church most of the day. Some folks had a quiet celebration at home. Some folks traveled to meet relatives. Over the river and through the wood to grandfather's house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow. Over the river and through the wood to grandfather's house away. We would not stop for doll or top for Tis Thanksgiving Day. Over the river and through the wood oh how the wind does blow. It stings the toes and fights the nose as over the ground we go. Over the river and through the wood straight through the barnyard gate. We seem to go extremely slow. It is so hard to wait. Over the river and through the wood when grandmother sees us come she will say oh dear the children are here. Bring a pie for everyone. Over the river and through the wood now grandmother's cat-eye spy. We're out for the fun. Is the pudding done? We're out for the pumpkin pie. Now that poem was written by another great woman, Lydia Mariah Child. And like Sarah Joseph Hale she was an author, a teacher, a poet, a crusader against slavery. And she published a magazine for young folks for eight years until public opposition to her stand on slavery caused circulation to drop and she was forced to cancel the magazine. She continued to write poems and novels and wrote a very useful book called A Frugal Housewife which offered recipes and advice on how to run a household on a limited budget. My wife Mary made good use of that book when she left her wealthy Kentucky home to come and marry me, a poor young lawyer just starting out in Springfield. She used that book to cook up some very satisfying and simple meals. Now of course we live in the president's house. We have a great big kitchen and a whole staff to come up with all sorts of sumptuous meals for great state occasions and important dignitaries visiting from all over the world. Mary feels right at home with those fancy parties but I sometimes miss those old fashioned holdouts we used to have in Indiana when I was a boy and didn't have a care in the world. Well, Thanksgiving is coming round again. I know we've all been through some tough times but no matter how things may seem there's always a great deal to be thanked for. As another author, Cecile Francis Alexander wrote, "'All things bright and beautiful, "'all creatures great and small, "'all things wise and wonderful. "'Let us be thankful for them all. Now at this point we'll take questions. If you're too shy to ask the first question we can take the second question first. Okay, so let me come back with, first of all, thank everybody for joining us and we have people from across the country and literally across the world from we have somebody from Kurtzstan which is so exciting and I think it's fantastic that you're so inspirational President Lincoln and getting us inspired and thinking about Thanksgiving and all we have to be thankful for. So first question we have is, what was it like signing the Emancipation Proclamation? Well, it was, I think as far as I'm concerned the high water market my career. When I was a boy and growing up I was worried that I'd go through life and die nobody would ever know that I was there but I felt that if anything would secure my reputation in history it would be the signing of that Emancipation Proclamation. So it was a great honor to be able to do that. And another question is, did you today it's a tradition for the president to pardon a turkey? Did you do such a thing in your day? Well, I have to be honest and say that I never pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey. What I pardoned was the Christmas turkey. A farmer had sent us a great big majestic turkey and my boy Tad fell in love with it and it became his best friend named Jack and it would follow him everywhere he went. So when it come time for Christmas he begged me knowing that I often pardoned soldiers who would fall in the sea for guard duty or had gotten scared and badly run away. I felt it wouldn't do those fellas any good to hang them so I would pardon them. We always gave the great satisfaction. So Tad come to me one day and asked if I would pardon Jack the turkey and so I did. So on Christmas we had roast beef instead of turkey. I wonder if that's where the tradition of pardoning turkeys came from. Well, it's certainly good for publicity. Yeah, that's great. Another question. What is your favorite food and whether Thanksgiving or whenever? Well, my wife thinks I'm kind of a picky eater. I get up pretty early in the White House and usually have breakfast with coffee and a boiled egg. At lunch if I have the time I have an apple and a glass of milk. And if you ask me two hours after dinner what I had for dinner sometimes I forget what I had. But I will say that I like gingerbread. I think I like gingerbread more and get less of it than any fellow I know. Well, I have to tell you when you were describing the meal with gingerbread and the whipped cream my mouth was watering. I like gingerbread too. And we have another question. Where's your hat? Oh yes, both are very interested in my hat. This is it. Now as Mr. Shakespeare says clothes or apparel off proclaim the man in my day you could almost tell what someone did for a living by the type of hat they wore. King had a crown, soldier had his three corner hat in George Washington's day and most respectable gentlemen had what they call a tall hat or a plug hat sometimes. They started out pretty short and got taller and taller as time went by as fellows tried to outdo each other in stature. I use mine to keep notes in that I don't want to forget. I used to deliver the mail out of it when I was a young postmaster and if nothing else you could always fill it full of water and give your horse a drink. And if you're kind to your horse he'll get you home no matter what condition you're in. Okay, when we have a question about another very, very famous document that you mentioned to get us for an address and did you really write it on a napkin? And also, did you think it was really gonna be forgotten? Well, I was sort of an afterthought for that ceremony in Gettysburg. It occurred to one of the organizers one day that they ought to add somebody official to say as they sent a few appropriate remarks after the big speech that lasted for 90 minutes. So they gave me about six weeks notice and I wrote the first draft on White House stationery and kept poking at it and working on it and scratching at it even to the night before I delivered the speech. I even interpolated a line as I delivered the speech. So the official copy has one line missing and the copies I made afterwards have that line inserted. That line was under God, but this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom. So that was the last change I made right in the middle of things, but it was so short, only two minutes or so by the poor photographer could barely get his camera set up and only got a picture of the top of my head when I was sitting down and people were expecting much longer and didn't know what to do. It was hardly a smattering of applause. I turned to my friend Ward Lammon and said, Lammon, that speech won't scour. It's a term from Farman where the dirt is so caked onto the plow that it doesn't come off easily and it doesn't make for good quality. But the next day I got a little note from this dog, Edward Evercourt, who made the big speech and he said that he would flatter himself if he thought he got closer to the spirit of the day in two hours as I managed to do in two minutes. That's one of the greatest compliments I ever got. And it certainly has been well remembered. And then we have another question. Why are you on the least? Of course, you probably didn't know that was going to happen, but you ended up on the least valuable coin on the penny. Any thoughts about that? Well, I was never one to flatter myself or seek the accolades of the crowds. When we decided in the midst of the war that the country needed stable currency, I had my Treasury Secretary, Sam D. Chase get up with his people and produce what we call the greenback dollar. And since he wanted to run for president, he put his own picture on it. So it was quite a while before I got my picture on any of the currency. And so I am on the penny and the $5 bill. And people forget that I'm also on those nice new gold looking coins that they're giving out these days. So that's enough for me. I'm not proud by any means. I never thought that there was anything special about my face. A fellow called me two faced once and I told him, if I had another face, do you think I'd wear this one? Ah, that's great. And we have another question. How big was your childhood home and what did you do as a little boy? Well, my father was a carpenter and he built our cabin and it was just one big open room made in those days out in the woods, five plates on one end table in the few chairs that he made himself in the other. My bed was in a loft above the kitchen and I had a ladder built into the wall for me to climb up there. We didn't spend much time indoors in the summertime because there was so much work to do on the farm. And in the winter, we sort of huddled by the fire all day. That is, when I wasn't out chopping more wood to keep the fire going, it had to go all the time day and night to warm the cabin and cook the food. So no, compared to Mary Todd's mansion in Kentucky, it was a very humble little cabin indeed. Ah, and anything special that you remember, any games that you played as a little boy that you remember? My sister Sarah and I would, we played games that we had to make up ourselves. We played tag and jumping games and running games. If we found some scraps of cloth, we could sew them up into a ball and throw that back and forth to each other. As we got older and could travel to neighboring farms and play with the other children or at school between sessions, then we would have racing games and wrestling games and a lot of things that young folks today wouldn't recognize and probably never heard of. But we were through desperation, made our own games and had our own fun when we had time to do it and we weren't working on the farm. Another question, what was school like? Ah, well, the highlight of my time to be able to go to school when there was a school and when there was somebody to teach it. It was again, a little building, just one room with a little fireplace in one corner. If you were sitting near the fireplace, you roasted, if you were sitting on the other side of the room, you froze. All the children from first grade to the eighth grade or so were all in there at the same time, all reciting their lessons at once. There was no notebooks or papers or chalkboard. You'd learn a lesson and you'd recite it. Some group would be doing the alphabet. Some group would be reciting the poem. Some group would be talking history and they'd all be talking it once. It was called a blab school. And if you were coming up through the woods and the window was open, all you'd hear from the school was blab, blab, blab, blab, all at the same time. But I love school. I'd rather be there than anywhere else. I really regret the lack of opportunity. I'd love to have a nice college education and a university in the East and probably no one ever would have heard of me. So, we have time for one last question and that is what is your favorite song? Well, I'm not as tuned and deaf as General Graham it is, who says he only knows two songs. One is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't. I always love music. We have very fine concerts in the White House by world renowned musicians. But one of my favorite songs is just a funny little song that folks used to play on the banjo back home. It's called Picky U Butler. We've probably never heard of it. And you don't want to hear me sing it. The dog's howl when I try singing. I love music. I think it's important for people from their body and soul to have music in their hearts. And I'm in favor of it. Well, thank you so much, President Lincoln. We have learned so much this morning and I've enjoyed hearing you talk about all your days at the White House as well as when you were growing up. So it's been great having you. And thank you everyone who joined us today. And this will be up on YouTube. Please feel free to share it. We do have a couple more slides for you to see. One is has the information with the link for the Docs Teach featured activity that's connected with this. And you can learn more about the 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation. And there it is. And then we have the slide for our program in December where we're going to meet Orville Wright. And it was in December of 1903 that the Wright brothers flew their first plane. So again, thank you to all. And I wish everyone the happiest of Thanksgiving wherever you are, whatever you're doing. And you've inspired me to make gingerbread. So wonderful to have you here. Thank you so much. Good day.