Seventeen Years of “No”

Quick answer: Who convinced Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday?

Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book. Starting in 1846 she wrote editorials, governors, and presidents asking for one national Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November. Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan turned her down. Her September 28, 1863 letter to Abraham Lincoln, written at age seventy-four, finally worked.

On September 28, 1863, a seventy-four-year-old widow writes to the President of the United States. She has done this before, to Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. None of them said yes. Three months after Gettysburg, with the casualty lists still in the papers, she is asking for a holiday. Left at thirty-four with five children, she wore mourning for fifty-seven years and picked up a pen: poems, a novel, then the editor's chair at Godey's Lady's Book, which she made the most widely read magazine in the country. In 1846 she took up a cause. Thanksgiving was a New England habit with dates scattered from October to January. She wanted one day for the whole nation, the last Thursday in November, and she wrote every autumn for seventeen years. The fifth president said yes. Her name was Sarah Josepha Hale, and you've known her words your whole life: Mary had a little lamb.

Why it matters for leaders: Most worthwhile campaigns collect polite refusals first; the leader who keeps writing is the one who gets the yes.

Q: Why did Hale choose the last Thursday in November?

A: She argued the harvest was in, summer travelers were home, and the fevers of the warm months had passed.

Q: What else is Sarah Josepha Hale known for?

A: She wrote the 1830 children's poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” edited Godey's Lady's Book for four decades, and raised money to finish the Bunker Hill Monument.

Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/seventeen-years-of-no

By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation