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The Real Story of the First Thanksgiving
by Ben Franklin (1785)
 
There is a tradition that in the planting of New England, the first settlers met with many difficulties and hardships, as is generally the case when a civiliz’d people attempt to establish themselves in a wilderness country.  Being so piously dispos’d, they sought relief from heaven by laying their wants and distresses before the Lord in frequent set days of fasting and prayer.  Constant meditation and discourse on these subjects kept their minds gloomy and discontented, and like the children of Israel there were many dispos’d to return to the Egypt which persecution had induc’d them to abandon. 
 
At length, when it was proposed in the Assembly to proclaim another fast, a farmer of plain sense rose and remark’d that the inconveniences they suffer’d, and concerning which they had so often weary’d heaven with their complaints, were not so great as they might have expected, and were diminishing every day as the colony strengthen’d; that the earth began to reward their labour and furnish liberally for their subsistence; that their seas and rivers were full of fish, the air sweet, the climate healthy, and above all, they were in the full enjoyment of liberty, civil and religious.
 
He therefore thought that reflecting and conversing on these subjects would be more comfortable and lead more to make them contented with their situation; and that it would be more becoming the gratitude they ow’d to the divine being, if instead of a fast they should proclaim a thanksgiving.  His advice was taken, and from that day to this, they have in every year observ’d circumstances of public felicity sufficient to furnish employment for a Thanksgiving Day, which is therefore constantly ordered and religiously observed.
 
I saw in the public papers of different states frequent complaints of hard times, deadness of trade, scarcity of money, &c. &c. It was not my intention to assert or maintain that these complaints are entirely without foundation; there can be no country or nation existing in which there will not be some people so circumstanc’d as to find it hard to gain a livelihood, people who are not in the way of any profitable trade, and with whom money is scarce because they have nothing to give in exchange for it.  And it is always in the power of a small number to make a great clamour.  But let us take a cool view of the general state of our affairs, and perhaps the prospect will appear less gloomy than has been imagined.

- Benjamin Franklin, The Compleated Autobiography, compiled and edited by Mark Skousen (Regnery, 2006), pp. 331-333. To order The Compleated Autobiography click here.


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