Happy Thanksgiving! As I tell anyone who will listen, it is a joy living here. Yes, four decades of powder stashes have fallen prey to an abundance of powderhounds, but there is still the backcountry.

I was reminded by history professor Heather Cox Richardson that Thanksgiving was created after two hard years of the Civil War. It was not the message I got in the fourth grade, but then again, that fourth grade was in the South of the 1950s. During that war, President Abraham Lincoln set Aug. 6, 1863, as a national day of thanksgiving. This followed proclamations of thanksgiving by Northern governors on the November and December of the previous year to remind their citizens that a war was being fought to protect the rights of all citizens to enjoy benefits established by the United States Constitution.

Professor Richardson states on her essay, which is available on Facebook and her free subscription newsletter, that “Northerners elected Abraham Lincoln to the presidency to stop the rich Southern slaveholders from taking over the government and using it to cement their own wealth and power.”

In the mid 1800s before the war, the Northern states contained the larger population of citizens and the Southern states contained most of the nation’s wealth in the form of cotton plantations. When Lincoln was elected to bring the Southern states, and their oversized senate influence into line, those states withdrew from the Union.

On this Thanksgiving we again have witnessed a larger number of voters who wish to move our nation away from autocracy — from fascism. My having had a front row seat to the height and demise of Jim Crow makes our recent presidential election a reason to celebrate. Happy Thanksgiving.