Good evening and welcome. Im ken ken weinstein, president and ceo of Hudson Institute. I apologize for the condition of my voice this evening. I really, really wanted to be here for the book form for Melanie Kirkpatricks new new book, the holiday at the heart of the american experience. I want to thank our friends at the historic Explorers Club in manhattan, especially the executive director and our good friend judas and i also want to thank the viewing audience on cspans book tv. Hudson institute is a policy organization that is based in washington, d. C. We promote International Leadership for the sake of security, prosperity, and freedom. Most of our work is in the Public Policy space. We do a lot of work on the future of security in asia, we look at fighting isis, talk about trying to overcome the challenges of the iran deal and so this book is an outlier of the product, will be thankful for many things as thanksgiving approaches like many of our its extraordinarily timely coming at the end of which was a by all accounts a very challenging election season. There is the possibility of hope for a Brighter Future or if youre among those who felt as the country did disgruntled by the election. As thanksgiving approaches us its a time for all of us whether we are red america or blue america come together to celebrate the most american of all holidays for the, blessings that we share that is why think this book is an extraordinary bucket will make a wonderful holiday gift for thanksgiving and beyond, i urge everyone to purchase it and i will happily sign it at the end of the event, you you can order it online if you will. The book begins with some reflections. We talk about visiting a high school in queens, 850 students, young men and women who just arrived in our country who are learning to be american and knowing it has to go this is something all of us all of us can identify with because all immigrants share a bit of the experience and all americans to the experience of the pilgrims who are looking for religious freedom in this country. I know in my family, my mother who came to this country at the age of eight was a refugee from nazi, germany and every thanksgiving was deeply moving because we felt great gratitude for what this country gave her and gave us. So this is deeply touching, uplifting for those who do not not know Melanie Kirkpatrick she is the senior fellow the former Deputy Editor of the editorial page of the wall street journal, she is well known analyst of asia known for her first book which tells the incredible story of the brave men and women of asias underground railroad and the efforts they do to help people escape from the maturity of north korea. Now since no good deed goes unpunished also all of us here from her columns on wsj as a member of the wall street Journal Editorial Board and first document. Two of them will have a conversation and they will open up for questions from the audience. Without further do its my great pleasure to turn it over to mary. [applause] i would just like to offer my thanks as well to the viewing audience on cspan. Thank you for tuning inches and to and to all of you for being here. On a personal note this is a very deeply moving moment for me. Melanie is a mentor of mine. Somebody who i have always said admired and aspired to be more like as a journalist and as a person. Its wonderful to be here to celebrate her and have a chance to talk about her latest book. For those of us those of you that dont know melanie, as a girl from buffalo going from japan in the 19 seventies, this is like going to the top of everest in 1800. Its wonderful to be here at the Explorers Club. Its in an unusual book i think its in safe ground. In the best sense of the word brings together history religion and politics feminism, our purpose here today is to give you a sense of why melanie wrote this book, what interested you in the topic into touch on a few things. I wanted to start by asking you, ivory author has an obsession to write a book what obsessed you about thanksgiving. What motivated you to do the kind of work and research in this value . I will answer that question in a minute. But first to the Explorers Club and to the Hudson Institute for having me here. I was very grateful for hudson support in writing this hudson book. And thank you very much can. Ability to, if he is here in the room. Thank you bill. There is also hudson trustee and senior fellow that i would like to thank. This trustee and senior fellow has a third role, he is also my husband his name is jack david and he was my first editor and my best editor. He never let me get away with anything and it could not have been as good of a book as it was without you. Thank you. I like to stop my think my stepdaughter who is also here with us. Jaclyn jaclyn did some of the research for me. She spent many hours looking at microfilm on the Public Library leading 19thcentury magazine and trying to find references to thanksgiving. Thank you jaclyn. A master thank you you mary. Its wonderful that youre here. I appreciate you coming. Dont thank me yet you dont know what questions to expect. The book first began as i look back at my thought processes on september 11, 2001i was in Downtown Manhattan that day and i saw the towers fall, like Many Americans in the wake of the terrorist attacks i began to think more and read more about what it means to be in an american. My search took me to William Bradfords marvelous book a plymouth plantation which he was the longtime governor of plymouth plantation. He wrote a wonderful book about the plymouth journey from england to holland and the mayflower to the new world. And and then the first few decades here. So i got interested in the subject and like many journalist i approached it from a journalist point of view and started to find out more about it. Because i was in the happy position of the Senior Editor at the wall street journal i could indulge my interest by writing an occasional article on thanksgiving which i did. But when i retired from the journal and after writing the book on north korea i decided to turn again to thanksgiving. I realize that thanksgiving in my interest in the subject really covered many of the same things in the big issues i had at the wall street journal. I was able to look at my interest in politics and economics. And in american culture, everything except for foreign affairs. I see this book as a totality of of a lot of what i learnt over my career. Its also very american thing that we have actual artifacts and we have firsthand accounts of thanksgiving where we are unique as a nation in that respect. If you go to pilgrim hall in plymouth, massachusetts you can actually see artifacts that were held by the pilgrims. One one of the argot artifacts that blew me away was William Bradfords bible which is on display there. It is the geneva translation of the bible. Which predated the king james version. The pilgrims believed this was a more authentic translation than ones that followed. They were great hebrew scholars by the way. William bradford layton like taught himself hebrew so he could read the first books of the bible of the old testament. I am glad there are many things in the book but religion seems to me the strongest thing and the holiday is suffused with religious meaning. That did that drive from europe . Did that come from a particular place . As i learnt the idea of celebrating a thanksgiving was a judeochristian tradition. Again, some people think the holiday may have come from the jewish holiday, i hope i was pronouncing it correctly. And you dont really know but certainly protestant denominations and catholics in the pilgrims case they did have thanksgiving days, and usually associated but the religious days of thanksgiving that the pilgrims in Early English settlers celebrated were for specific significant such as a rainfall that saved a harvest, or a military victory, or good health. So later that became it transformed into thanksgivings for general blessings. The 17th century this is controversial. Some people argue that if you had a thanksgiving for general blessings you would take for granted gods goodness and he would forget to be thankful so it wasnt until the end of the 18th century that massachusetts which was one of the holdouts began they celebrated annual thanksgiving. As he said thanksgiving came from the judeochristian tradition but it wasnt always celebrated as a secular holiday. There is some sort of dispute when you celebrated thanksgiving as to who can participate in what it was for. You have an anecdote in the book, think it was about charleston, south carolina. In the Jewish Community that that they were left out a thanksgiving because it was proclaimed. They were. The governor of south in 1844 issued a thanksgiving proclamation that was exclusively for christians. Charleston is a jewish tradition, the first Jewish American to be elected to a political appointment was a jew from charleston. In the first to die in the revolutionary war was from charleston. So they have a long historic tradition. They said we are not going to celebrate thanksgiving because you excluded us. There is quite extensive written debate about this. In the end, the governor was just completely entrenched in his viewpoint. He wrote back when the objective say no, america is a christian country. And this is only for christians. So they did not celebrated. Others were excluded to such as unitarian. Then then his term of office ended at the end of the year and the new governor issued a new proclamation. Lets go back to how we got our modern thanksgiving, George Washingtons proclamation, how did that come about. It George Washington is an important figure in history. His first proclamation, the first proclamation of any president was his proclamation for National Thanksgiving. This was in 17891789 and believe it or not it was controversial. The congress, the First Congress have a meeting downtown and federal hall since march of 1789. September came along and they were ready to take a break. So so a congressman from new jersey, elias wanted to go to washington and asked him to issue this proclamation but congress, members of congress objected to it and a debate ensued. Ensued. They raised issues that are still relevant today. The first was they said he did not have the executive authority under the constitution to issue such a proclamation. So. That was jeffersons argument. When he became president he refused to issue a proclamation though he had issued proclamations when he was governor of virginia. So so that was the first objection. The second had to do with religious freedom. The congress had just debated the First Amendment so the idea of separation of church and state was very much in their minds. Some argued that religion, or thanksgiving was a religious holiday and there for the president should not issue a proclamation. Hundred washington walk that line . Washington was wise as in so many things had a brilliant solution. He issued the proclamation and then he sent it to the governor of the 13 states with a cover letter requesting them to celebrate thanksgiving. Not telling them to do so. There are two other or three other traditions. First he called called it for the last thursday of november, seconds on thanksgiving day he made a charitable contribution, usually he was quiet about such things but this time he did so publicly because, i think he wanted to set an example for people to think of the poor on thanksgiving day. Third, his proclamation was entirely inclusive of all religions. Thereby setting the example for future president s to include all religions. So we have talked about the religious theme, where on the political theme, we see the tension between the states and the federal government so we also see the kind of cronyism emerging in thanksgiving when you write about fdr and his decision to change the date of thanksgiving. Talk about that. Fast forward to the 20th century. In 1939 fdr, nine fdr, in the middle of the depression had the dumb idea that if he moved the date of thanksgiving forward by one week it would extend to the Christmas Shopping season in the economy would boom. Well americans that were be only too happy to spend money they had it but they didnt have it. So it was a failure. In 1941 he admitted that. But along the way it was very interesting as to how americans responded. Some people are some states jus said we will follow the president s example. Others were outraged. In 1939 you have the example of half of the state celebrating on the original, traditional date which was the last thursday of november. The other half celebrating on roosevelts date to which it came to be known as frank said giving, after franklin roosevelt. In texas, be in texas announced it was going to celebrate on both days. What happened during the civil war . In the civil war lincoln and Jefferson Davis in the early part of the civil war each issued proclamations for days of thanksgiving to give thanks for military victories. But, in 1863 in 1863 lincoln did something different. He issued a proclamation for a general thanksgiving following washingtons tradition called on all americans, north and south to give thanks to the blessings for the country. If you think about that in 1863, one of the bloodiest if not the bloodiest years of our countrys history where americans were killing each other, the battle of gettysburg had recently taken place. Here was lincoln asking people to be thankful. I think what he was doing was pointing the way to what the country was going to be like after the war. This is a fabulous book and everybody out there should buy a copy including you in the viewing audience. Thank you cspan. Yes, you can clap for that. The book isnt just a history, it doesnt just teach about the religious roots of this are the politics of it which is reflected in our own modern era but there is these interesting figures you profile that pop up at different points. Since were talking about the civil war, sarah hale which is a feminist theme in the book has anyone in the audience familiar with her . Only a few. For the audience, can you talk a little bit about her and how she fits in to thanksgiving and what her role wasnt a holiday. She is widely known as the godmother thanksgiving. She is an editor of the 19th century, born in in the late 18th century in new hampshire. Her genius as an editor was that she believed, she thought americans wanted to read about american things. Believe it or not this was unusual in the early part of the 19th century. Back then magazine editors would wait for the magazines from london to arrive and then they would take the material in the articles and publish them in american magazines but Sarah Jessica hill did something different. She started hiring american writers to write for her including nathaniel hawthorne, and edgar allan polo who went on to describe her, and i love this race is a woman of masculine energy. [laughter] she was once editor of the most popular widely sick circulated magazine of the era. One of the great editors of american history. Her passion was thanks giving. Starting early on she believed the National Thanksgiving to unify the country which was splitting over the issue of slavery. She would write about thanksgivings that was called by governors. She would publish fixed fiction set around thanksgiving to try to create a happy sentimental feeling for the holiday. She also publish recipes. She may have have been the first editor to publish recipes which again sounds pretty amazing. But they were american recipes with american in ingredients. Thats right. In addition to her work on the magazine she would write hundreds of letters over the decades of what we would call opinion makers today politicians and others it wasnt until 1863 that lincoln, she writes them asking them to support her campaign for National Thanksgiving. Finally in 1863 with lincoln he heeded the call and did so. She lived a long life too. I think she was 90 when she died. When asked late in life about this she said that she was very happy that we had a National Thanksgiving but there was one thing that remains and that was it had to be enshrined in legislation. And that cannot happen until 1941 when congress did itself and roosevelt signed it into law. Under that law that is the law under which we celebrate on the fourth thursday of every november. As you can tell this is like drinking from a fire hose. You think the book was 400 pages but it is not. We have a religious aspect, political aspect. Thats because i was used to writing editorials which are short. Its a great book. You should definitely definitely buy it. Religion, politics, feminist figure and we have to talk about food. Theres also a culinary history here too. What was thanksgiving like for the people who celebrated it . If . If you wanted to today what the pilgrims and the indians ate youd have to put venison, corn, mussels and oysters on your menu. There may. There may have been a turkey there, bradford references and the abundance of wild turkey in the area. But there was no pie because they did not have wheat flour. There were no potatoes which had not made their way to this part of new england yet and there were no cranberries. Probably no cranberries because if you have ever bitten into a cranberry you would understand but you would not have them without sugar. They had had no sugar. About apples . No apples. Apples were brought later in the 17th century and so the phrase american as apple pie did not apply to the pilgrims. That was all life. Well in a way. The book also has readings in the back and it contains these two accounts that we have of the original thanksgiving and not one account. That meal that they celebrated and change through the years not just because of the food that we imported but the also the availability. I remember theres a passage in