5 notable presidential Thanksgiving proclamations
Abraham Lincoln (1863)
During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation on October 3, 1863 establishing every last Thursday in November as “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
“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,” stated the proclamation.
“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.”
