Skip to main content

Giving Thanks for Government Documents

By Anonymous

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the ideal holiday to celebrate by sharing historical legal information with family and loved ones: out of all holidays, on Thanksgiving there is the best chance that said family and loved ones will be too full to run away from the table quickly when the topic of historical legal research comes up.  Even better, if one’s captive audience falls asleep one can blame it on the turkey.  The following resources may be useful for either legal research or topical dinner conversation:
Most of the popular characterization of the “First Thanksgiving” in 1621 is due to records written by two colonial governors: Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford and Mourt’s Relation by Edward Winslow.  These documents were lost and only rediscovered in the 19th Century, when they became the basis for associating Thanksgiving Day with the feast shared by the Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag Indians. 
During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress declared Thursday, December 18, 1777, a day of “Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise” in honor of the victory over British forces at the Battle of Saratoga, and followed other victories with similar occasions. 
George Washington issued the first presidential call for a “Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer” to be held on Thursday, November 26th, 1789.  Similar one-time holidays were declared later, by President Washington again and subsequently by John Adams and James Madison.  After President Madison’s call for a “Day of Thanksgiving” on Thursday, April 20, 1815, to give thanks for the end of the War of 1812, no national Thanksgiving holidays were celebrated for almost half a century.
Abraham Lincoln began the tradition of an annual Thanksgiving holiday in 1863, issuing a proclamation calling for a  “day of Thanksgiving and Praise” to be held on the fourth Thursday of November, and requesting that the American people observe the occasion by giving thanks for the nation’s prosperity and by praying for an end to the Civil War. 
In 1939, at the request of retailers hoping for a longer Christmas shopping season, Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving up to the third Thursday in November in a controversial decision; however, federal holidays are binding only on Washington, D.C. and federal employees, and state response to this move was mixed; Congress moved Thanksgiving back to the fourth Thursday of November in 1941 where it remained to the present day.
Finally, for those in need of a final legal anecdote to wake Thanksgiving guests up for dessert: the start of the tradition of the President ‘pardoning’ the White House turkey, often misattributed to Harry Truman, only dates back to the 1980s.  The idea of a presidential pardon for a turkey was proposed by Ronal Reagan in 1987, who did not pardon any additional turkeys; the tradition of celebrating every Thanksgiving by issuing a pardon to the White House turkey was begun by George H. W. Bush in 1989.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amazing, but True, Deportation Story of Carlos Marcello

By
Earlier this week, the University of Houston Law Center was fortunate to have as its guest Professor Daniel Kanstroom of Boston College of Law. An expert in immigration law, he is the Director of the International Human Rights Program, and he both founded and directs the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Clinic. Speaking as the guest of the Houston Journal of International Law’s annual Fall Lecture Series, Professor Kanstroom discussed issues raised in his new book, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora . Professor Michael Olivas introduced Professor Kanstroom to the audience, and mentioned the fascinating tale of Carlos Marcello, which Professor Kanstroom wrote about in his chapter “The Long, Complex, and Futile Deportation Saga of Carlos Marcello,” in Immigration Stories , a collection of narratives about leading immigration law cases. My interest piqued, I read and was amazed by Kanstroom’s description of one of the most interesting figures in American le...
1 comment
Read more

This Day in Legal History -- Roy Cohn

By
Big lawyers have big personalities, and few had as big a personality as Roy Cohn who was born on this day in New York City in 1927. Cohn’s career was spent in the Washington DC—New York axis, famous in the press for his legal and social exploits, his list of famous and infamous clients, and as the poster-boy for every stereotype of the dishonest grasping lawyer. The legal career of Roy Cohn is an object lesson on the use, and abuse, of the lawyer’s power. Roy Cohn was born on February 20, 1927 in New York City. His father was a justice in the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court and was well connected politically. These connections, along with a precocious intelligence which allowed him to graduate from Columbia law school at age 20, paved the way for a bright legal career. Cohn’s first job (after waiting until he turned 21 to be admitted to the bar) was as an assistant U.S. Attorney in New York. He first came to prominence in his role as a prosecutor in the Rosenberg espi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

By Anonymous
“Man’s inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.” –Martin Luther King Jr.   Last week, I had the pleasure of attending  Professor Zachary D. Kaufman ’s presentation on  Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda  hosted by the  Johannesburg Holocaust & Geno cide Ce ntre . Among the many takeaways highlighted by Professor Kaufman and drawn from  Lessons from Rwanda: Post-Genocide Law and Policy   were ten simple yet profound lessons:   Lesson #1: Hate speech is dangerous.   To illustrate the role that hate speech played in the Rwandan genocide, Professor Kaufman discussed multiple forms of  propaganda , such as Kangura, Radio Rwanda, and RTLM “hate radio.”   He concludes that we must have limits, including with respect to social media, and further asserts that social media must do a better jo...
Post a Comment
Read more