Lincolns Proclamation
Amazingly! Thanksgiving wasn’t made a
national holiday until Lincoln included it along with his famous Gettysburg
Address.
Washington D.C. October, 1863
By the President of the United States of America:
A PROCLAMATION
The year that
is drawing towards 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 extraordinary a nature that they cannot 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 ignite and to provoke
their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained,
the laws have been respected an obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except
in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly
contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful division of
wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national
defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has
enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines as well of iron and coal
as of the 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 battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in that
consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect
continuance of years with large increase of freedoms.
I do therefore
invite my fellow citizen 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 so dwelleth in the Heavens.
Lincolns
statement of continuance of freedoms made me think of a Jonathan Daniels, valedictorian
of Virginia Military Institute. He was a theology student at Episcopal Divinity
School when in the summer of 1965 he stepped in front of a sheriff who aimed a
gun at two black girls to prevent them from entering a convenience store. The
sheriff fired his pistol taking Daniels life.
Upon
graduation from high school he said,
“I wish you the joy of a purposeful life. I
wish you new worlds and the vision to see them. I wish you the decency and the
nobility of which you are capable”
DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
