David Gergen, a professor of public service at the Harvard Kennedy School where he founded the Center for Public Leadership, and Nancy Koehn, a historian at the Harvard Business School where she holds the James E. Robison chair of business administration, joined Boston Public Radio Tuesday to discuss former President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation and its relevance today.

In the midst of the Civil War in 1863, Lincoln and then Secretary of State William Seward issued a proclamation in which they urged Americans to "implore the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation."

Gergen and Koehn suggested looking back to the message of unity ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday this Thursday. It may seem like we are in the most divided era in the history of the United States, they said, but we must remember that it has been worse, and our country came out the other side all the better for it.