There’s potential for peril at the Thanksgiving table today. Only the bravest hosts, those fully assured of domestic tranquility, would make reference to recent political events by doing such things as setting out color-your-own-Electoral-College place mats. A house divided might never make it to the dessert course.

The risks might seem elevated this year, but the holiday was never as serene as it looked in Norman Rockwell illustrations. Most families stuffed grudges and complaints as they filled their stomachs, and provocateurs — the familial precursors to internet trolls — dished up awkward topics. It is only after the passing of many decades that Rockwell’s 1950s gleam like grandma’s silver gravy boat.

But given the unrest of recent days, it may help to recall that Thanksgiving itself — or at least the national holiday — was created in a time of great division. The first national Thanksgiving, Nov. 26, 1863, was declared by President Lincoln at the urging of Sarah Josepha Hale of Newport, N.H., who thought it could help bind the nation together.

Hale, for whom the Sarah Josepha Hale literary award is presented annually, was a person of considerable influence. She was editor of Godey’s Lady Book, a magazine that had as many as half a million subscribers. She was a dogged champion of women’s causes, such as better working conditions and higher wages, along with more schooling for girls and women.

Hale had been pressing for a national Thanksgiving holiday for some 15 years. She wrote to Lincoln that she had presented the idea to the governors of all U.S. states and territories, along with “our Ministers abroad, and our Missionaries to the heathen — and commanders in the Navy.” She told Lincoln she feared it would take many more years to get each state and territory on board, and urged a national declaration so that “the permanency and unity of our Great American Festival of Thanksgiving would be forever secured.”

Lincoln agreed to her request, and his ensuing proclamation began with references to America’s many bounties, beginning with “fruitful fields and healthful skies.” He added, “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.” He found much to be thankful for even as the battles of the Civil War raged and the outcome of the conflict was far from certain.

This national holiday was wrought in a time of war by a president whose language spoke to the “better angels’’ of all, inspired by a woman whose stamina in advancing her cause could not be denied. Their example inspires today, and could not be more relevant in these times.