Presidential Thanksgiving Addresses
There is no direct record that turkey was on the menu when the Pilgrims shared the first Thanksgiving Feast with their Wampanoag neighbors. Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford did send four men on a "fowling" mission in preparation for the feast to supplement the five deer which were killed for the event. The fowlers were successful, and the woods surrounding the Colony were teeming with wild turkey, but the hunters may just as likely harvested ducks or geese for the occasion. Days of Thanksgiving had been declared by Presidents and the Congress on several occasions in the early Republic. Amid the Nation's most harrowing crisis, the Civil War , President Lincoln formalized the idea in 1863 by declaring the formalized national holiday falling on the last Thursday of November. A few weeks later, Lincoln was involved in the White House's first turkey pardon. A bird was being raised on the White House grounds to be slaughtered for the First Family...