America’s first Thanksgiving proclamation

It is late September, the year is 1777. The Congress of the states who recently declared independence from the British is meeting in a town called York, a hundred miles from Philadelphia. Why were they meeting there? Well, September had been a brutal month for General George Washington and his army. After losing the Battle of Brandywine in Delaware on Sept. 11, the British would capture the capital Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Congress had no choice but to flee, and they ended up in York. With all of the bad news, they decided to have the secret meeting to determine whether there was still