We Need Abraham Lincoln - Happy Thanksgiving

Without question, more than any other single individual, Abraham Lincoln saved our union of states. Had it not been for his leadership, including his moral clarity, our nation, “one nation under God,” would have ceased to exist in the 1860s. In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln reminded the nation that there was much of which to be grateful. In October 1863, President Lincoln issued a thanksgiving proclamation to his countrymen. In November 1863, the words of President Lincoln in the fields of Gettysburg would again stir his nation. There he would remind the nation of the cost of liberty and justice for all. It remains to us, the living, to carry on the work that comes with living in, as Lincoln described, “the last best hope of Earth.”

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Secure 1776 encourages all of our followers to read the full proclamation, and to consider where we are as a nation today. We need to encourage all of our fellow citizens to break free from the spirit of the age that seeks again to divide America. Our liberty, public safety, and our future are held in the balance. As a nation, we have much of which to be grateful. Thank you Lord .

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

Abraham Lincoln 1863

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.

Signed: A. Lincoln, 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.

A Message from Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash provided song and faith to all within the sound of his voice. In his later years his music was even more personal. Below is his “Thanksgiving Prayer.” Mr. Cash was singing about his wife, and yet more. We here at Secure 1776 ask our readers to imagine this message as our expression of thanks for God’s blessing on America. We are grateful that from it’s very beginning – America was blessed by the hand of God. America has been a great nation, because it was a good nation – which was grateful to God. We remain grateful.