Thanksgiving
Proclamation by ABRAHAM LINCOLN
After George Washington authorized the first Thanksgiving Day in 1789,
74 years passed without another such day of thanks. Then, Abraham Lincoln
established the holiday as an annual event in America. His Thanksgiving
Proclamation is worth reading again today:
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
know that by his divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected
to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear
that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may
be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful
end of our national reformation as a whole people?
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.
President
Lincoln authorized our annual Thanksgiving Day in 1863 - in the midst
of the Civil War.
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On September 28, 1789, just before leaving for recess, the first Federal
Congress passed a resolution asking that the President of the United States
recommend to the nation a day of thanksgiving. A few days later, President
George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26,
1789 as a "Day of Public Thanksgiving" - the first time Thanksgiving
was celebrated under the new Constitution. Subsequent presidents issued
Thanksgiving Proclamations, but the dates and even months of the celebrations
varied. It wasn't until President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation
that Thanksgiving was regularly commemorated each year on the last Thursday
of November.
In 1939, however, the last Thursday in November fell on the last day of
the month. Concerned that the shortened Christmas shopping season might
dampen the economic recovery, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a
Presidential Proclamation moving Thanksgiving to the second to last Thursday
of November. As a result of the proclamation, 32 states issued similar
proclamations while 16 states refused to accept the change and proclaimed
Thanksgiving to be the last Thursday in November. For two years two days
were celebrated as Thanksgiving - the President and part of the nation
celebrated it on the second to last Thursday in November, while the rest
of the country celebrated it the following week.
To end the confusion, Congress decided to set a fixed date for the holiday.
On October 6, 1941, the House passed a joint resolution declaring the
last Thursday in November to be the legal Thanksgiving Day. The Senate,
however, amended the resolution establishing the holiday as the fourth
Thursday, which would take into account those years when November has
five Thursdays. The House agreed to the amendment, and President Roosevelt
signed the resolution on December 26, 1941, thus establishing the fourth
Thursday in November as the Federal Thanksgiving Day holiday.
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