thanksgiving~

http://www.christianity.com/ChurchHistory/11630534/

"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."

- Abraham Lincoln.