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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SecularBull who wrote (83987)	11/21/2000 8:08:55 PM
From: briskit	Respond to of 769670

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION - 1863 In 1863, America was in the middle of the Civil War. The year opened poorly for the Northern military. In the West, their efforts to capture Vicksburg during the winter and spring were continually frustrated. In the East, the Union forces were defeated at Chancellorsville in early May. In July, 160,000 men clashed at Gettysburg in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Disease killed far more men in both armies than did bullets. The death rate among Union and Confederate prisoners of war was appalling. It was in the midst of this time of great suffering that Lincoln issued the following proclamation: "It is the duty of nations as well as of men to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. We know that by His divine law, nations like individuals, are subject to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins; to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; 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. 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 has seemed to me fit and proper that God 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 as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." Thanksgiving started as a direct result of a terrible national calamity, the Civil War. Abe's response was to seek deeper meaning, even spiritual meaning for the country. Too bad Abe didn't have helpful people reminding him of the separation of church and state. Indeed, how judgemental of him to say we have forgotten God? I hope President Clinton echoes similar sentiments this year. Regards, and happy Thanksgiving ya'll.