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President Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1864
It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions:
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this 20th day of October, A.D. 1864, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State
I might read this to the family gathering. I am sure it would be appreciated by the kids.
Thank you so very much for posting this. It is clear and beautiful and speaks to every soul alive, and in response the soul nods an affirmation and sheds a joyful tear that its desires are heard and understood by great men. If only every person would hear and heed the cries from within.
Thank you for posting this important American document. :) Happy Thanksgiving. :)
Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
And all the people said, “Amen.”
1 CHRONICLES 16:36
Thank you very much. I will be using this in my Thanksgiving post on my blog at RushBabe49.com. A very happy Thanksgiving to my Ricochet Family.
Thank G-d for the USA and Abraham Lincoln.