Posted by
Billy on Thursday, November 26, 2009 11:16:51 AM
by the President of the United States of America
The year that is drawing toward its close has been
filled with the blessings of fruitful years 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 can not 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 unequaled 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 theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted
by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
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,
tranquility, and union.
(I don't believe we know for sure if President Lincoln ever came to put his faith in Jesus but this still is something we should read. Do read all of it 1863
Lincoln Presidential Proclamation.)
