Whereas a joint committee of both Houses of Congress has waited on the
President of the United States and requested him to "recommend a day of
public humiliation, prayer, and fasting to be observed by the people of
the United States with religious solemnities and the offering of fervent
supplications to Almighty God for the safety and welfare of these
States, His blessings on their arms, and a speedy restoration of peace;"
and
Whereas it is fit and becoming in all people at all times to acknowledge
and revere the supreme government of God, to bow in humble submission to
His chastisements, to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions
in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom, and to pray with all fervency and contrition for the pardon of
their past offenses and for a blessing upon their present and
prospective action; and
Whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessing of God,
united, prosperous, and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil
war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this
terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and
crimes as a nation and as individuals to humble ourselves before Him and
to pray for His mercy--to pray that we may be spared further punishment,
though most justly deserved; that our arms may be blessed and made
effectual for the reestablishment of law, order, and peace throughout
the wide extent of our country; and that the inestimable boon of civil
and religious liberty, earned under His guidance and blessing by the
labors and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored in all its
original excellence:
Therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do appoint
the last Thursday in September next as a day of humiliation, prayer, and
fasting for all the people of the nation. And I do earnestly recommend
to all the people, and especially to all ministers and teachers of
religion of all denominations and to all heads of families, to observe
and keep that day according to their several creeds and modes of worship
in all humility and with all religious solemnity, to the end that the
united prayer of the nation may ascend to the Throne of Grace and bring
down plentiful blessings upon our country.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed, this 12th day of August, A.D. 1861, and
of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-sixth.
[SEAL.]