Thanksgiving Proclamation

A PROCLAMATION, by the President of the United States .

ALMIGHTY GOD, our Heavenly Father, has been pleased to vouchsafe to us, as a people, another year of that national life which is an indispensable condition of peace, security and progress. That year, moreover, has been crowned with many peculiar blessings. The civil war that has so recently raged among us has not been anywhere reopened; foreign intervention has ceased to excite alarm or apprehension; intrusive pestilence has been benignly mitigated; domestic tranquility has improved; sentiments of conciliation have largely prevailed, and affections of loyalty and patriotism have been widely renewed. Our fields have yielded quite abundantly; our mining industry has been richly rewarded, and we have been allowed to extend our railroad system far into the interior recesses of the country, while our commerce has resumed its customary activity in foreign seas. These great national blessings demand a national acknowledgment.

Now, therefore, I, ANDREW JOHNSON, President of the United States, do hereby recommend that Thursday, the 29th day of November next, be set apart and be observed everywhere in the several States and Territories of the United States, by the people thereof, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, with due remembrance that in His temple doth every man speak of His honor.
 

I recommend also that, on the same solemn occasion we do humbly and devotedly implore Him to grant to our national councils and to our whole people that divine wisdom which alone can lead any nation into the ways of all good. In offering these national thanksgivings, praises and supplications, we have the Divine assurance that the Lord remaineth a King forever; those that are meek shall He guide in judgment, and such as are gentle shall He teach his way. The Lord shall give strength to His people, and the Lord shall give to His people the blessings of peace.

In witness where of, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this eighth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, and of the independence of the United States the ninety first.

ANDREW JOHNSON

Frank Leslie’s Weekly, founded in 1855 and continued until 1922, was an American illustrated news publication started by publisher and illustrator Frank Leslie. While only 30 copies of the first edition were printed, by 1897 its circulation had grown to an estimated 65,000 copies.