Good Morning Family,
It was interesting that a few of the kids in our Wednesday Night K-4th Grade class were talking about the history of Thanksgiving Day. They were telling how they had learned that Abraham Lincoln had drafted this proclamation after being encouraged by a woman named Sarah Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book in the mid 1800’s. She had written several presidents encouraging a National Day of Thanksgiving. It wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln, that the idea took hold in his heart after the battle of Gettysburg, that He issued this proclamation, which would be his last as president as he would be assassinated a short five months later.
No speechwriters involved here, history tells us this was right from our president’s heart in the midst of a positive turning of the tide in the Civil War as he was also still in deep grief over the death of his 12-year-old son, Willie. It was during this period of Lincoln’s life that he fully turned to Christ, history records. I last printed this for our church family at Thanksgiving ten years ago. It was brought to my mind once again by these young students this Wednesday evening. Read and be encouraged. People just don’t seem to talk like this anymore…
Your Shepherd of the Hills,
Bro. Steven
Dr. Steven Gann
President Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 Final Presidential 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
