Thanksgiving Day, 1864

 

Thanksgiving Day, 1864

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 20th day of October, A.D. 1864, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

Secretary of State .

Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation 118—Thanksgiving Day, 1864 Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/202432

voting is one crap I do not care to give

A few years back — long past the time anything could be done about that year's elections — someone I prize a great deal wisecracked, "I don’t vote, so I don't give a crap."

Without much thought, but I hope not too ungenerously, I cracked back: "Should that be, 'I don't give a crap, so I don’t vote?'"

I get it that some people don't believe their vote can make a difference in the kind of world (or neighborhoods) where we live, raise children, and hope for the best. But I'm still surprised when someone young, or a parent, or a would-be parent, or a teacher, or a youth worker, or anyone else who cares about the young, don't force their way to the front of the voting line — just in case it should turn out they're wrong about voting ... just in case it should turn out their vote is the one that tips an important race one way or the other.

Is it too late to vote today?

Closing Arguments For + Against Democracy in America

The closing argument in political campaigns used to go something like, “Elect me and I will work every day to deserve your vote.”

Of course, that’s still the political argument of candidates who are committed to a democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people — core principles of the old Republican Party when it was founded in the 1850s.

But, this year, a candidate in Wisconsin told supporters that "Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I'm elected governor." Is there a way to keep that promise without overriding democratic processes for voter registration, casting votes, accurately counting votes, and legally certifying the outcome to the vote? Or was he just bullshitting?

He’s not the only one. Following in the footsteps of a former President of the United States who, before the votes were cast and counted, contested the results in the election, six Republican candidates for governor or the US Senate in battleground states would not commit to abiding by next week’s election results … five more ignored or declined to answer the question.

When people show you who they are, believe them, Maya Angelou advised.

I can think of fewer than five Republicans in, or running for the next US Senate — and no Republicans in or running for the next US House of Representatives — who haven’t already shown us that they are unwilling or unable to mount a robust defense of democracy against the prevailing power of the new Republican Party — the MAGA Republicans who look an awful lot like the old Democratic Party when it tried to unravel the Declaration of independence and the Constitution in the 19th century.

Since then, the parties have traded places and they have shown us who they are. The values that drove the old Democratic Party are the values that drive the new Republican Party: government of the few, by the few, and for the few.

Today, Democrats mean to deepen and broaden conscientious liberty and equal protection of the law for every citizen. That’s governance in the service of equality. 

Republicans, based on legislative action the last two years mean to decrease liberty and impose or reimpose restrictions on the protection of citizens whom they do not regard as equal. That’s governance in the service of hierarchy.

The US Constitution and Declaration of Independence leave no doubt about the American preference for a genuinely representative democracy over any sort of autocratic monarchy or oligarchy. 

In this political moment, Republicans have shown us that they cannot be trusted to serve the ends of American democracy and I am persuaded that a red vote in 2022 is a vote against America’s core values.

https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/the-2020-and-2024-presidential-votes-loom-large-in-wisconsins-2022-election-for-governor/

https://electionlawblog.org/?p=131983

https://www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass/when-people-show-you-who-they-are-believe-them-video