William Leggett argues that Thanksgiving Day is no business of the government (1836)

It is sometimes quite striking to see how acts taken in time of war deeply influence popular culture for a long time afterwards. A good example of this is president Lincoln’s “Proclamation of Thanksgiving” of October 3, 1863 in which he stated that, notwithstanding the “diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry,” and “the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battle-filed,” not to mention the many dead and injured, that the American people should “acknowledge as with one heart and one voice” “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” Twenty seven years before, William Leggett had warned in his editorial of the dangers to the principle of the separation of church and state if the Chief Magistrate or head of state used his powers to declare a religious holiday. He stated that “this is no part of his official business, as prescribed in the Constitution”. On the other hand, he thought that power lay with the individual churches, their leaders, and congregations to decide what religious holidays to observe and how to observe them. This would obviously be consistent with what he described as “perfect free trade in religion”. Leggett concluded that “It is in this light we consider the gubernatorial recommendation of a day of thanksgiving; and because it is wrong in principle, and not because of any particular harm which the custom has yet been the means of introducing, we should be pleased to see it abrogated.”