Glynn Young

Two Thanksgiving Day Proclamations

November 28, 2024 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, Oct. 3, 1789

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions—to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually—to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed—to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord—To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us—and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Go: Washington

Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, Oct. 3, 1863

Washington DC, October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and 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 the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward, Secretary of State

Top photograph by Virginia Simionato via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“The Last Days of the War” by Dr. Henry T. Bahnson

November 27, 2024 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

The half-century after the end of the Civil War saw an outpouring of memoirs by veterans on both sides. Some were written by war heroes, like Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman (and were bestsellers as well). For time, it must have seemed like every general and officer in the war was writing an account. A joke made the rounds that so many people had witnessed Robert E. Lee’s signing of the surrender to Grant at Appomattox that both armies had crowded into the room.

For a time, those who had been privates – enlisted and drafted – penned their remembrances as well. These accounts, and I’ve read a considerable number number for my soon-to-be-published historical novel Brookhaven, are not so much concerned with strategy and battle outcomes as they are with day-to-day survival, getting enough food, mud (lots of mud, especially when you have to walk through it), in short, what everyman experienced. You find none of the romance of war in these accounts; what you do find is gritty commentary about the war and the hope to make it home one day.

Henry Bahnson was a private in a North Carolina company. He was a much older man, and a physician, when he wrote his account of the last days of the war. He narrowed his story to the period from April 2 to April 9, 1865 – the final week for Robert E. Lee’s army. He was there, and he very nearly died several times that week.

His story, “The Last Days of the War,” was published as an article in The North Caorlina Booklet, a periodical of “great events in North Carolina history” akin to what we know as historical or academic history journals today. It’s been digitized and made available through North Carolina Digital Collections. The article was originally published in 1903.

His account begins with the final siege of Petersburg, some 20 miles south of Richmond and a critical rail junction for keeping the Confederate capital and Lee’s army supplied. He describes the fighting – how it began (interrupting a planned holiday), the intensity of the battle, the deaths of friends, one literally shot between the eyes right next to him. He evaded death several times, gradually making his way to the body of Lee’s army, which was in full flight westward.

The situation was more complex than “Lee’s army fleeing westward from Grant” might imply. Skirmishes and small battles erupted along the way. At one point, Bahnson and the bare handful of men with him captured 102 Union troops and their officers. Not long after, he himself was taken prisoner. He spent his final days in the way in a prisoner camp, with no food; Grant’s supply trains had been destroyed or left behind as the army raced after Lee. The Union soldiers got what food was left; Confederate prisoners were reduced to chewing roots, tree bark, and buds, sucking the inside of their haversacks, and drinking water “by the gallon to lessen the aching void of hunger.”

He was eventually paroled and freed, making his way home to North Carolina. He’d lost 38 pounds in three weeks, and his father didn’t recognize him. The comforts of home and family, including a warm bath, forever dispelled “the glamour and illusions of the pomp and pride, and circumstances of glorious war.”

Bahnson’s experiences run counter to the myths of romance and “the Lost Cause” that came to be so connected to the South for generations. This was war at ground level, focused on what soldiers constantly contended with – hunger, mud, cold, and the regular threat of injury or death.

When Fiction Seems to Predict Fact

November 18, 2024 By Glynn Young 3 Comments

The Dancing Priest novels seem to be back in the fiction-becomes-fact business.

Last week, after saying he would not resign, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby did, in fact, resign. This followed the release of the Makin Report, which documented the failings of the Church of England (COE) in a cover-up of an abuse scandal. The scandal went back to the 1980s when a barrister named John Smyth abused young teens at COE church camps, slipped out of England when it appeared the law was onto him, and went on to victimize more boys in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Welby’s sin: he learned about the abuse in 2013 but failed to report it to authorities. Smyth could have been brought to justice at that time; he died in 2018.

One as-of-yet-unanswered question is if Welby was the only COE official to know. It’s unlikely that others, including people high in the hierarchy, also didn’t know. The scandal may not be over. And lest we think this type of scandal only happens to the big established denominations like the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church, there are lessons here for all of us. A church I’ve attended had a member of the staff get involved in an inappropriate and illegal relationship; the difference was that the head pastor, as soon as he was told, called the police. That’s how it’s supposed to work, no matter how damaging it might be to an organization’s reputation. Righteousness trumps reputation, as Bernard Howard wrote for the Gospel Coalition.

In Dancing Prophet (2018), the fourth of the Dancing Priest novels, Michael Kent-Hughes has an abuse scandal thrust upon him. He’s a former COE priest and now the king, and he’s simultaneously dealing with a developing church scandal and a collapse of the government of Great London. His church nemesis is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sebastian Rowland, who has spent considerable time covering up an abuse scandal that threatens to blow the church apart.

During the research for the book, I learned that the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with the rest of the hierarchy and the church itself, is subject to the monarch. That’s how Henry VIII set it up in the 1530s during the English Reformation. And the archbishop functions at the pleasure of the monarch. That the current prime minister, Keir Starmer, refused to back Justin Welby publicly was of less importance than the silence that was coming from King Charles. Welby’s announcement noted that King Charles has graciously accepted his resignation. That’s how it works. The Catholic pope tells God and the church; the Archbishop of Canterbury tells the king (or the king asks for it).

In Dancing Prophet, Michael tells Sebastian Rowland he must resign. Rowland at first refuses, until Michael, in the presence of the police, explains the evidence against the archbishop, all of which will be made public. It’s worth noting, too, that Michael went to the police as soon as he became aware of the activities of one priest, which would soon explode into a global crime. And Michael, when he speaks to the British people, will tell them that the Church of England may not survive. Righteousness trumps reputation.

Dancing Prophet was written long before the John Smyth scandal was known publicly. What I did know concerned a COE abuse scandal involving some priests; it had first surfaced in the news in 2012. For the novel, I adapted the abuse scandal that has rocked (and continues to rock) the Roman Catholic Church to the COE.

I’m not a prophet; I can’t and don’t predict the future. But I’ve learned that, when you’re doing research for a book like any of the Dancing Priest novels (“future history,” one reader called them), you pick up on issues, concerns, trends, and ideas that are being discussed. You read about past events and troubles. You learn how people, especially people in authority, respond to what they see as threats. And you know what humans naturally tend to do: wish it would all go away, ignore it, make it worse, try to contain it, or cover it up. It might work for a time, but it usually doesn’t work forever.

We forget that lesson: righteousness trumps reputation.

Related:

Can Fiction Predict the Future?

Did Dancing Prophet Become Prophetic?

Top photograph by Ruth Gledhill via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Sweet Agony of Waiting

November 13, 2024 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

A publisher asks to see your full manuscript. You read it three more times, trying to eradicate all typos, missing words, unclear passages, and confusing lines. You attach it to a politely professional email, which you hope disguises what you’re experiencing in equal measure: hope, fear, and anxiety.

You hit send.

And then you wait.

Waiting may be as much or more exhausting than the writing itself, but it is a fact of life in book publishing.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog.

Photograph by David Taffett via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Ushers” by Joe Hill

November 6, 2024 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Martin Lorensen is a young man who’s been extremely lucky, or he’s extremely guilty. Twice he’s narrowly escaped death – a train wreck and a school shooting. Both times, his escape was a last-minute thing – a panic attack kept him from boarding the train and an upset stomach stopped him from entering school and returning home. In the train wreck case, he warned a mother and daughter not to board.

The FBI is interested. Very interested. To the two agents interviewing Martin, it seems like there’s a strong possibility that Martin knows what’s going to happen before it does. And perhaps he’s not the lucky bystander. Perhaps he’s the cause.

Ushers is a short story by best-selling writer Joe Hill, and it’s one creepy story. You’re sucked into what may or may not be a tale of a serial killer. The story is structured in two parts – an “informal” interview of Lorensen by the agents and then a meeting in a bar between the suspect and one of the agents, where all is made clear.

Hill is the author of The Fireman, Heart-Shaped Box, and Strange Weather, among many others. Several of his stories have been adapted for movies; his Locke & Key stories became a popular series on Netflix. He’s also written several graphic novels, and he has a not terribly active blog at Hill’s House (the title possibly being a nod to Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House).

Ushers begins as a police procedural type of story and ends as something entirely different. And Hill nicely builds the tension right to the breaking point.

The Journalists’ Prayer

October 30, 2024 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

St. Bride’s Church in London’s Fleet Steet is known as the “Journalists’ Church.” The church and the area around it have a long history with writers, publishing, printing, and newspapers. But it’s history – the newspapers that once occupied the buildings of Fleet Street are long gone, absorbed into other newspaper or moved to other locations.

British journalism grew up here for a simple reason: the first printing press with moveable type was brought to the area in 1500, and the printing (and later the newspaper business) grew up around it. But a church had occupied the site since about 500 A.D.; the current St. Bride’s was completely rebuilt in the late 1950s to restore what had been destroyed during the German Blitz of December 1940.

A nearby building which once housed the *Sunday Telegraph*.

The church has seen its fair share of famous purposes. Samuel Johnson lived across Fleet Street; John Milton at one time lived in the churchyard; Samuel Pepys was baptized here; the 18^th century novelist Samuel Richardson was buried here; and Charles Dickens lived for a time in the parish (we forget that Dickens started his writing career as a reporter).

On a recent visit to London, we visited St. Bride’s and its crypt during one of the two London Open House weekends. When it was restored, it was rebuilt with all its former Christopher Wren elegance. The church’s interior is simply beautiful.

The crypts below the church are another story altogether. Over the centuries, they had been forgotten and buried; they were rediscovered after the German bombing. You can see part of a Roman building foundation, a small medieval chapel; and the area where hundreds of people were buried (the nameplate for Samuel Richardson’s coffin is on display).

Placed around the church proper are various plaques, listing the names of journalists killed in World War I, World II, Iraq, and other conflicts. And many of the seats have nameplates in memory of journalists; I sat in the one bearing the name of Malcolm Muggeridge, a journalist well worth knowing about and reading.

What struck me most profoundly was a polished stone sheet bearing “The Journalists’ Prayer.” The words are attributed to St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), the patron saint of Catholic writers and journalists. While St. Bride’s directs them to journalists, the words could apply to writers in general, and more generally to anyone who works. But I read those words, and I felt the gap between them and me. The prayer is something that writers, and especially Christian writers, can aspire to.

The Journalists’ Prayer

Almighty God,
strengthen and direct, we pray,
the will of all whose work it is to write what many read,
and to speak where many listen.
May we be bold in confronting evil and injustice,
and compassionate in our understanding of human weakness,
rejecting alike the half-truth that deceives, and the slanted word that corrupts.
May the power that is ours, for good or ill,
always be used with respect and integrity;
so that when all here has been written, said, and done,
we may, unashamed, meet Thee face to face,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Related:

Footsteps at St. Bride’s.

Top photo: The Journalists’ Prayer inscribed stone in St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street. Below, the church’s famous tiered steeple of St. Bride’s, the inspiration for wedding cakes everywhere.

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