Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863
By the President
of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is
drawing toward 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 can not 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
theater of military conflict, while that theater 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 defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the
ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the
iron and coal as of our 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 battlefield, and the country,
rejoicing in the consciousness 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 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 imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the
wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the
divine purpose, 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 3d day of October, A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of
the United States the eighty-eighth.
Abraham Lincoln
By the
President:
William H.
Seward,
Secretary of State.
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