It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own 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 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 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.
--Abraham Lincoln - October 3, 1863
My MIL, yeah the one and only who argues with Moses, told me that if Abe Lincoln were Catholic, he'd be canonized as a saint.
Lincoln is one of these towering figures that I've never really read. One day soon, hopefully.
Note how many times this *bastard*, *right-wing wacko*, *evangelical nutjob* invokes the Almighty.
Such profanity wouldn't fly today with Big Media and the other high priests of statism.
Heck, if Abe Lincoln were to use such diction as a present-day government school teacher....they'd fire his butt.
2 comments:
One thing you probably didn't know about ol' Abe: when his Mom died, he and his father carried her in a wooden box for over a mile to put her in her grave. As a kid, that must have been tough.
How did you get through UPenn without learning about Stinkin' Lincoln??
Didn't take any history classes. I had credits from AP US History and AP Modern European History.
So that must have fulfilled my *requirements*.
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