Post by kirbydoc on Nov 23, 2023 20:53:56 GMT -5
First let me say that I thank God for everyone here.
And then this:
The First National day of Thanksgiving on October 3, 1863, issuing a formal proclamation, passed by an Act of Congress:
...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 celebrate the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dweleth 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 enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and Union.
Abraham Lincoln
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 enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and Union.
Abraham Lincoln
The proclamation marked the culmination of a 36-year crusade to make Thanksgiving a national holiday led by Sarah Josepha Hale. She envisioned a day filled with roast turkey, pumpkin pie, and sweet potatoes and launched a letter-writing campaign to members of Congress and governors. In a Sept. 28, 1863 letter to Lincoln, she pointed out that he could continue the tradition set by George Washington, who declared the first national Thanksgiving in 1789 on the last Thursday of November.