William Howard Taft: Proclamation - Thanksgiving Day, 1909

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Proclamation - Thanksgiving Day, 1909
November 15, 1909

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BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION

The season of the year has returned when, in accordance with thereverent custom established by our forefathers, the people of the United Statesare wont to meet in their usual places of worship on a day of thanksgivingappointed by the Civil Magistrate to return thanks to God for the great merciesand benefits which they have enjoyed.

During the past year we have been highly blessed. No greatcalamities of flood or tempest or epidemic of sickness have befallen us. Wehave lived in quietness, undisturbed by war or threats of war. Peace and plentyof bounteous crops and of great industrial production animate a cheerful andresolute people to all the renewed energies of beneficent industry and materialand moral progress. It is altogether fitting that we should humbly andgratefully acknowledge the Divine source of these blessings.

Therefore, I hereby appoint Thursday, the twenty-fifth day of November, as a day of general thanksgiving, and I call upon the people on thatday, laying aside their usual vocations, to repair to their churches and unitein appropriate services of praise and thanks to Almighty God.

In witnesswhereof, I have hereunto put my hand and caused the seal of the United Statesto be affixed.

Done at thecity of Washington this fifteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord, onethousand nine hundred and nine, and of the Independence of the United Statesthe one hundred and thirty-fourth.

WILLIAM H. TAFT

By the President:

P.C. KNOX,Secretary of State.

Citation: John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA. Available from World Wide Web: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=68483.

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