What has been said about Thanksgiving:
On November 29, 1623, three years after their arrival, and two years after the first Thanksgiving, Governor William Bradford made an official proclamation of a day of Thanksgiving: To all ye Pilgrims:
In as much as the great Father has given us this year and abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetable, and has made the forest to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience; now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November ye 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twentythree, and the third since ye Pilgrims landed on Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings. William Bradford, Ye Governor of Ye Colony.Continental Congress October 18, 1780, issued a Proclamation for a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, after the revealing and subsequent deliverance from Benedict Arnold's plot to betray General George Washington and his troops to the British:
Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God, the Father of all mercies, amidst the vicissitudes and calamities of war, to bestow blessings on the people of these states, which call for their devout and thankful acknowledgements, more especially in the late remarkable interposition of his watchful providence, in the rescuing the person of our Commander-in Chief and the army from imminent dangers, at the moment when treason was ripened for execution....It is therefore recommended to the several states...a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, that all the people may assemble on that day to celebrate the praises of our Divine Benefactor; to confess our unworthiness of the least of his favors, and to offer our fervent supplications to the God of all grace...to cause the knowledge of Christianity to spread over all the earth.
"Coupled with our grateful acknowledgment of the blessings it has been our high privilege to enjoy, we have a deepening sense of solemn responsibility to assure for our selves and our descendents a future more abundant in faith and security.
On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a formal proclamation, passed by an Act of Congress, initiating the first annual National Day of Thanksgiving:
No human counsel hath devised, not hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are gracious gifts of the most high God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy...I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, 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....[it is] announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven bay all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord....It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and voice, by the whole American people.
Psalms 92:1 It is a good thing to give thanks unto the LORD, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High:
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