Thanksgiving
11/24/2011
"I believe a kind God has ordered all things for our good. My reliance is in the help of God. At present I am not concerned with results." - General Robert E. Lee
Holidays
Thanksgiving Proclamation By President Davis
11/24/2011
1862 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation by CSA President Jefferson Davis
President Jefferson Davis, Confederate States of America, made the following Thanksgiving Day proclamation in 1862. His first such proclamation, "a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer," had been issued in 1861. It was not until two years later that Abraham Lincoln copied Davis and announced the first official Thanksgiving day in the North.
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Even during the Civil War, toys had a place
11/05/2011
AP PHOTO/KEITH SRAKOCIC
By: KEVIN BEGOS
Associated Press
In this Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011, photo, Soldiers and Sailors Hall curator and historian, Michael Kraus shows a toy wooden horse from the U.S. Civil War era in a storage area at the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial museum in Pittsburgh. This and other letters and artifacts from the Civil War will be the centerpiece of the kick off the annual Marine Corps Toys for Tots drive.
Even as terrible battles were fought, toys and Santa Claus had a place in American life during the Civil War.
For the start of an annual Toys for Tots campaign Friday, Michael Kraus was dressed in Civil War garb at a Carnegie Mellon University display of 1860s toys. Toys from the era were on loan from the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Museum in Pittsburgh.
Kraus, the museum curator, has been drawn to toys from the Civil War era since he was a boy.
"You'd see these things come out of houses in the 1960s so I started to learn about them," Kraus said.
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