1863
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.
I have been thinking about Thanksgiving. Only celebrated a couple of weeks ago, the day is again almost a year away and, for most, will lie unexamined until next November. But for me, now is the time to reflect.
Was I thankful that Thursday morning, and was my gratitude sustained throughout the day? If I am darkly straightforward, I would say, “No.“
Why are we to collectively, as a nation, stop and give thanks? Has gratitude become a slur? If pausing to be thankful has become about gluttony and football, we are doomed to lassitude and, eventually, despair.
I looked to the founding document of our recent holiday to remember.
In the fall of 1863, with the cannons and carnage of the recent battle at Gettysburg in mind, a National Day of Thanksgiving proclamation was drafted. Though President Lincoln issued the document, the author was Secretary of State William Seward. It is a masterpiece to my eyes and ears. I think the imprimatur of Lincoln is there in the strokes of the pen.
My goal over this coming year is to prepare for the next Thanksgiving. I want to develop gratitude unalloyed with greed and each day thank Almighty God for his undeserved mercy. It is the least and best thing I can do.
I think Seward (and Lincoln) got it right.
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 theatre of military conflict; while that theatre 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 battle-field; 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.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward, Secretary of State