NOVEMBER 25 "THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION OF 1863"
It is the duty of nations as well as of
men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their
sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine
repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth,
announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations
are blessed whose God is the Lord. We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and
prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has
ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand
which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us,
and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these
blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel
the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God
that made us. It has seemed to me fit and proper that God 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 as a day of Thanksgiving
and praise to our beneficent Father Who dwelleth in the heavens.
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