One Of A Kind

On Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation inviting citizens of the United States to “set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” His act established Thanksgiving as a national event to be celebrated the last Thursday of each November.

Thanksgiving that year was celebrated on Nov. 26, one week after Lincoln’s trip to a small Pennsylvania town where he memorialized the fallen in one of the war’s climactic battles. With bodies still lying unburied in the fields behind him, Lincoln asked the nation to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.”

And with those spare words, Lincoln rewrote America’s political lineage. He traced the nation’s birth to the Declaration of Independence, in which Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, instead of the Constitution, which allowed slavery to exist. It was a masterstroke of both political and moral courage.

During the four years of the Civil War, more than 620,000 people would die – 2% of the population. Nearly everyone who survived the war was touched by it in some way.

But even amid such profound sorrow, Lincoln found reason to thank a loving God.

Today, we adopt Lincoln’s proclamation as “Our View.” Our usual editorial and “Another View” will return on Friday.

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October 3, 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 so 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 unequalled 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

– Abraham Lincoln

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/a-day-for-thanksgiving-8235hs6-134434143.html