Lincoln's thanksgiving day.
We observe that
Lincoln, with commendable gratitude, has issued his proclamation for a day of thanksgiving among the universal Yankee nation.
This is an annual custom of that people, heretofore celebrated with devout oblations to themselves of pumpkin pie and roast turkey.
We have nothing to say against the custom.
It is one becoming a better people, and which even they have great reasons for observing.
If any body on the earth has reason to be thankful that the rain falls on the unjust as well as the just, it is the
Yankee.
At this time they have special grounds for thanksgiving.
The formula of the Pharisee, always adapted to their national self-esteem, has been demonstrated in this war after a fashion which must carry conviction to the most incredulous.
It is a formula, more-over, in which even those can join who have not the privilege of being Yankees. "
I thank thee that I am not as other men." The Yankee may say that with a grateful heart, and other men can never be thankful enough that it is literally true.
So let us all have a day of thanksgiving, and the national airs of
Yankee Doodle and Dixie for once be blended in honor of the same delightful beatitude.
That the
Yankee is not as other men, he proved by drawing the sword upon the old customers whose trade had made him rich, and laboring with all his might and main to cut open the goose that laid him the golden egg. What "other men" would have hit upon so ingenious an expedient for improving their condition.
In 1860, their nation was free from debt.
The interest upon their debt in 1861 is over eighty-one millions of dollars, which is about five millions more than the whole revenue of the
United States the year before they went to war. By the 1st of May next, their national debt will amount to $2,500,000,000, and an interest of $113,000,000. This is something to be thankful for, if they mean to pay it.--In 1860, a million or more of Yankees were alive and eating thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie who will not be crowding the tables at the thanksgiving of 1864.
The Yankee who does not rejoice that these fellows are out of the way, and that he is eating their share as well as his own, must be lost to all the finer feelings of his race.
It is much to be thankful for that they have such a President as
Lincoln.
What other men on the habitable globe would have chosen an ignorant and vulgar backwoods pettifogger for their
Chief Magistrate; or, having incurred the loss of the richest portion of their territory, more than a million of men, and two billions of money, in penalty of their folly, would have worked for his re-election with every energy of soul and body?
What other men would expect anything else from another four years experiment but a double amount of debt and dead men?
What other men would find occasion for thanksgiving in such a past and such a future?
But the
Yankee knows what he is about.
The money of the
Government goes into his own pocket; and the fewer to eat, the more to be eaten.
So he sends up his praises for
Abraham Lincoln, that dispenser of fat contracts and thinner out of crowded populations.
What "other men" would have carried on a war in the spirit and manner in which the pious and exemplary Sons of the Pilgrims have conducted this contest?
Thousands of dwelling-houses burned and their once happy and unoffending inmates turned out to face, as best they may, cold and starvation; ten thousand barns and mills, with all their contents, given to the flames; whole cities depopulated; other cities made the target of a storm of bomb-shells, bursting among helpless, shrieking women and children; vast and once lovely regions of country laid black and bare by the fiery besom of desolation!
Surely no "other men" but Yankees could perpetrate, in the eves of the world, deeds like these; and no other men, in any age, would thank the God of Christianity for the achievements of devils.
Let us rejoice with the
Yankee that "he is not as other men." Better to be the victim than the perpetrator of crimes against God and Humanity.
