Proclamation for a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise by General Saxton

I hereby appoint and set apart THURSDAY, THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY OF NOVEMBER, as a day of Public Thanksgiving and Praise; and I earnestly recommend to the Superintendents of Plantations, Teachers and Freedmen in this Department, to abstain on that day from their ordinary business, and assemble in their respective places of worship, and render praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for the manifold blessings and mercies he has bestowed upon us during the past year, and more especially for the signal success which has attended the great experiment for freedom and the rights of oppressed humanity, inaugurated in the Department of the South. Our work has been crowned with a glorious success. The hand of God has been in it, and we have faith to believe the recording angel has placed the record of it in the Book of Life.

You freed men and women have never before had such cause for thankfulness. Your simple faith been vindicated. "The Lord has come" to you and has answered your prayers. Your chains are broken. Your days of bondage and mourning are ended, and you are forever free. If you cannot yet see your way clearly in the future; fear not, put your trust in the Lord, and He will vouchsafe, as he did to the Israelites of old, the "cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night," to guide your footsteps "through the wilderness" to the promised land.

I therefore advise you all to meet and offer up fitting songs of thanksgiving for all these great mercies which you have received; and, with them, forget not to breathe an earnest prayer for your brethren who are still in bondage.

Given at Beaufort, S.C., this Ninth day of November, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two.

R. Saxton,
Brig. Gen. and Military Governor

Thanksgiving 1862 from the Journal of Charlotte Forten

Thursday, November 27 ~ "Thanksgiving Day" 


This, according to Gen. [Rufus] Saxton's noble Proclamation was observed as a day of "Thanksgiving and praise." It has been a lovely day - cool, delicious air, golden, gladdening sunlight, deep blue sky, with soft white clouds floating over it. Had we no other causes the glory and beauty of the day alone make it a day for which to give thanks. But we have other causes, great and glorious, which unite to make this peculiarly a day of thanksgiving and praise. It has been a general holiday. According to Gen. Saxton's orders an animal was killed on each plantation that the people might to-day eat fresh meat, which is a great luxury to them, and indeed to all of us here. This morning a large number - Superintendents, teachers, and freed people, assembled in the little Baptist church. It was a sight I shall not soon forget - that crowd of eager, happy black faces from which the shadow of slavery had forever passed. "Forever free!" "Forever free!" Those magical words were all the time singing themselves in my soul, and never before have I felt so truly grateful to God. 


... And what a significant fact it is that one may now sit here in safety - here in the rebellious little Palmetto State ...


But this has been the happiest, most jubilant Thanksgiving day of my life. We hear of cold weather and heavy snow-storms up in the North land. But here roses and oleanders are blooming in the open air. Figs and oranges are ripening, the sunlight is warm and bright, and over all shines gloriously the blessed light of Freedom - Freedom forevermore!