NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER
AND THANKSGIVING, 1863 BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA
This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's
national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President
Lincoln issued many orders like this. For example, on November
28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local
day of thanksgiving.
The holiday we know today as Thanksgiving
was recommended to Lincoln by Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent
magazine editor. Her letters
to Lincoln urged him to have the "day of our annual Thanksgiving
made a National and fixed Union Festival." The document below
sets apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving
and Praise."
According to an April 1, 1864 letter from John Nicolay, one of
Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of
State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting.
Fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary on October
3 that he complimented Seward on his work. A year later, the manuscript
was sold to benefit Union troops and since then has disappeared.
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has
been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields 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
cannot 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 theatre of military
conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the
advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of
wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to
the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle
or the ship; the axe 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 heretofore. Population has
steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made
in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing
in the consiousness 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, tranquillity
and Union.
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 Third day
of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the
Eighty-eighth.