The year that is drawing toward 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 can not 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 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 plow,
the shuttle, or the ship; the ax 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.
[SEAL.]
Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A.D. 1863, and
of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.