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The Vital Community relationships that Yellow Ribbon America helps bring together during the Christmas Holiday Season help America’s Military Units and their families get Vital Community Support Year Round! This is the whole reason the Yellow Ribbon America Campaign for America’s Military & their Families and Operation Christmas For Our Troops & Their Families was created!

The BEST Support is Local Community Based Support!

Merry Christmas!

1863 President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving

Celebrated shortly after Lincoln committed his life to Christ, and celebrated while America was still in the midst of its Civil War. It was this proclamation which eventually led to the establishment the U.S. national Thanksgiving holiday.

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.

Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” She explained, “You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution.”

Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale’s request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. George Washington was the first president to proclaim a day of thanksgiving, issuing his request on October 3, 1789, exactly 74 years before Lincoln’s.

The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

By the President of the United States of America.

Washington, D.C. October 3, 1863

A Proclamation of Thanksgiving and Praise.

“The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful years and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the field of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than theretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they 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 next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

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 Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.”

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler et al.

Yellow Ribbon America News Desk:

Today is the U.S. Marine Corps 242nd birthday. Below are some important figures and dates for the military branch, which counts tens of thousands of service members among its ranks.

1798: This is when the Marine Corps Band was established by a congressional act, the Marines website says. “Its mission is unique—to provide music for the President of the United States and the Commandant of the Marine Corps,” it explains.

183,477: The total number of active duty service members as of August 2017, according to the Defense Manpower Defense Center (DMDC).

15,384: The number of active duty women in the Marine Corps as of August, the DMDC says.

39,106: The amount of people in the Marine Corps Reserve as of August.

1883: The year “Semper Fidelis” became the official Marine Corps motto. The term means “always faithful” in Latin.

Nov. 21, 1942: This is when then-commandant of the Marine Corps Thomas Holcomb approved a line in “The Marines’ Hymn” be changed from “On the land as on the sea” to “In the air, on land, on sea,” the Marines Corps says.

3: The number of core Marine Corps values. They are honor, courage and commitment.

1: The current commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert B. Neller. 

-Fox News