Lincoln gave us Thanksgiving as a time to unite. We owe it to him to try

North Carolina resident David Burke joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss why he believes he was called by God to help thousands this holiday season still reeling from the devastation left by Hurricane Helene.

We tend to associate Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims in 1621. Shiny square buckles on boxy black shoes and a feast with the Indians, but in fact, this cherished national holiday actually began centuries later, in the midst of the greatest conflict to ever engulf the United States of America.

In early October of 1863, fresh off of a costly, but eventually decisive, victory in the Civil War’s battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln decreed that he would "set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving," the randomness of which, in fairness, does sound a bit like Nate Bargatze’s Geroge Washington on "Saturday Night Live."

But remarkably, even as the cannons were still hot, even in the face of another two years of brutal destruction and loss, Lincoln was already thinking about how the country could once again be united.

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In his proclamation he does, "fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with Divine........

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