Thomas Jefferson’s Thanksgiving and Prayer Proclamation
Today we continue our Words From Our Founders series examining America’s Founding Fathers’ words on religion, religious liberty, and morality.
As Thanksgiving approaches, we are featuring various proclamations of prayer and thanksgiving issued by America’s founders. Below is a proclamation issued by Thomas Jefferson on November 11, 1779, when he was governor of Virginia.
Proclamation Appointing a Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer
Whereas the Honourable the General Congress, impressed with a grateful sense of the goodness of Almighty God, in blessing the greater part of this extensive continent with plentiful harvests, crowning our arms with repeated successes, conducting us hitherto safely through the perils with which we have been encompassed and manifesting in multiplied instances his divine care of these infant states, hath thought proper by their act of the 20th day of October last, to recommend to the several states that Thursday the 9th of December next be appointed a day of publick and solemn thanksgiving and prayer, which act is in these words, to wit.