Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I am republishing President Abraham Lincoln's proclamation for the first national celebration of Thanksgiving Day, to settle any question about to Whom exactly we are giving thanks. The proclamation was signed during the final year of our Civil War - America's greatest bloodletting - sacrificing more than 600,000 souls.

Giving thanks to Almighty God for the unprecedented blessings he continues to shower upon these United States of America is an essential American tradition recalling the first Thanksgiving held in the autumn of 1621, which included 50 Pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag Indians, lasting three days. It also demonstrates the essential religious belief shared by all of our Founding Fathers, even Thomas Jefferson. Religious belief in a benevolent God was acknowledged by all Founders (even agnostics ) to be the necessary center of this republic, and of all republics. This belief had nothing to with an "establishment" of religion. It was simply a public acknowledgment of the central principle of a Supreme Benevolent Creator. Thomas Jefferson saw no contradiction to this and his firm belief in the separation (non-establishment) of church and state.

America, once again, needs to humble herself in order to offer Thanksgiving to the Almighty God Lincoln sought during the most devastating trials of our Civil War.

Again, Happy Thanksgiving from the land of the free, and home of the brave - and grateful.

***

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

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 20th day of October, A.D. 1864, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.