Tuesday, November 23, 2010

President Lincoln's Proclamation Creating Thanksgiving Holiday

From an e-mail today from From Rose Mary Zapor, Esq. of The Zapor Law Office, P.C. in Denver.

The quote below is the last part of President Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation, issued in 1863.  Since we continue in war and have been in an era of political division, I thought the sentiments expressed by our 16th President are appropriate to the season.  May we all experience a season of peace and harmony during this Thanksgiving Season.

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.

By The President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward, Secretary of State