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| Thanksgiving Proclamation |
... Abraham Lincoln, a man who learned to face discouragement and move
beyond it. Did you know that it was Abraham Lincoln who, in the midst of the
Civil War, in 1863, established the annual celebration of Thanksgiving?
Lincoln had learned how important it is to stop and thank God in the midst
of great difficulties.
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have
been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in
numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have
forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in
peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly
imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were
produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with
unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity
of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made
us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be
solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one
voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow
citizens . . . 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."
Abraham Lincoln |
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