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.
Washington, D.C.
October
3, 1863
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 Unites States the
Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham
Lincoln |
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