The Desolate Wilderness and the Fair Land -Thanksgiving 2012

Every Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I look forward to reading the paired "editorials" published on the Wall Street Journal's opinion pages every year since 1961, "The Desolate Wilderness" "And The Fair Land."

This year we have a bonus, the perennials are joined by an excellent historical essay by Ira Stoll, "A Day of Thanksgiving," describing the first official American Thanksgiving Proclamation, by the Continental Congress in 1777, following the surrender of the British forces to the Continental Army at the Battle of Saratoga. The resolution authored by Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia and Daniel Roberdeau of Pennsylvania, declared "a day of Thanksgiving to God" as a national observance, so that "with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor." This was, of course, before the creatioin of the American Civil Liberties Union.