Thanksgiving History Revisited

That all the People may with united Hearts on that Day express a just Sense of His unmerited Favors -- Particularly in that it hath pleased Him, by His over ruling Providence to support us in a just and necessary War for the Defence of our Rights and Liberties; ...by defeating the Councils and evil Designs of our Enemies, and giving us Victory over their Troops -- and by the Continuance of that Union among these States, which by his Blessing, will be their future Strength & Glory." --Samuel Adams on behalf of the Continental Congress, November 3, 1778
"We have come to this Rock, to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors; our admiration of their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty, which they encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and establish. And we would leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to fill our places, some proof, that we have endeavored to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles, and private virtue; in our veneration of religion and piety; in our devotion to civil and religious liberty; in our regard to whatever advances human knowledge, or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin." --Daniel Webster
"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence." --Justice Joseph Story

Imagine that, "our admiration of their virtues; our veneration of their piety; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty." Let us hope that the pendulum that has swung so far from that time will swing back to that period when people of faith were admired instead of today's ridicule of those with a moral center.