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Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts
By the President of the United States of America. Washington, DC October 3, 1863
A Proclamation.
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 as the iron and coal as of our 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 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 imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, 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.
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.
Abraham Lincoln
By the President:
William H. Seward,
Secretary of State.
During the Civil War, after issuing his Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln set a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, MARCH 30, 1863, stating:
"It is the duty of nations...to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins...with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy...
The awful calamity of civil war...may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins."
Lincoln continued:
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven...
We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God.
We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own."
Lincoln concluded:
"Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for...forgiveness."
The Confederates won the Second Battle of Bull Run, crossed the Potomac River into Maryland and captured Harper’s Ferry. But the Confederate drive was halted at the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day of fighting in American history.
In total, over a half million lost their lives in the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
In his Second Annual Message, DECEMBER 1, 1862, President Lincoln wrote:
“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free...We shall nobly save-or meanly lose-the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail.
The way is plain...a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.”
At Independence Hall, Philadelphia, February 22, 1861, Lincoln said:
“The Declaration of Independence gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world for all future time.
It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance...”
Lincoln concluded
“This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence...I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”
NOVEMBER 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address where 50,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in a 3 day battle:
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
Lincoln went on:
"We are met on a great battlefield...to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live...But...we cannot dedicate...this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it."
Lincoln continued:
"It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced...That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure."
Lincoln ended:
"That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Seward's Folly is what Alaska was called when it was first purchased from Russia, as it was thought to be of no value.
Only when it was discovered to be rich in natural resources was appreciation shown to Secretary of State William Seward, who was born MAY 16, 1801.
Serving under Abraham Lincoln, William Seward was wounded by an accomplice of John Wilkes Booth the same night Lincoln was shot.
Seward stated:
"I do not believe human society...ever has attained, or ever can attain, a high state of intelligence, virtue, security, liberty, or happiness without the Holy Scriptures; even the whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible."
As the vice-president of the American Bible Society, 1836, William Seward stated:
"I know not how long a republican government can flourish among a great people who have not the Bible; the experiment has never been tried; but this I do know: that the existing government of this country never could have had existence but for the Bible."
Seward concluded:
"I...believe that if at every decade of years a copy of the Bible could be found in every family in the land its republican institutions would be perpetuated."
