Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Presidential Proclamation

     What a meaningful way to end a truly outstanding day!  Our friend, and author Rich Carroll, sent us this email which really gives closure to this historic day.  One of the advantages of being a blogger is that it affords us the opportunity to read history again -- some we'd forgotten -- some we'd never learned.  Today was a day to give thanks for so many blessings. Yet, we fell that today, when our country is at war, and our military is deployed to so many parts of the world, it is particularly fitting to reprint this proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln, lest we forget to whom we give thanks, and why.
Two Sisters

Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Presidential Proclamation



Thanksgiving was first celebrated by settlers at Plymouth in the Massachusetts colony in 1621. U.S. Presidents Washington and Madison each issued a Thanksgiving proclamation once during their Presidencies. However, it was not until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation that the holiday was established as a national annual event. The first observance of this U.S. national holiday came one week after the dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery at Gettysburg.
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.


Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the field of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than theretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.


No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.


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.


In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.


[Signed]


A. Lincoln