Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 12.djvu/1322

 12 1 O APPENDIX. No. 19. March 30, 1868. BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA : A PROOLAMATION. Preamble, WHEREAS, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in. al the aH`a1l‘S of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, rerpiested the President tp designate and set: apart a day for National prayer and umiliation : _ And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sms and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentancewill lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced m the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord : And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected 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 but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reibrmation 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 seliisufficient 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 oiiended Power, to con— fess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Day set apqart Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the §¤¤·d¤y vt; _ ¤· views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, desi nate and set apart gg;*};Q;*’*¤· Thursday, the 80th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, md’pmye,§’ and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devote to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be head on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country, to its former happ condition of unity and peace. In witness wliereoi, l have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington this thirtieth day of March, in the [L. s.] year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and ot the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By the President: WILLIAM H. Smwnn, Secretary of Sum:.