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PROCLAMATION
Fasting,
Prayer, and Thanksgiving
John
Adams, March 7, 1799
This
proclamation was given at the time when the serious
plague of Yellow Fever crossed the country. In this
proclamation, Adams asked the citizens of the United
States to set aside Thursday, April 25, 1799, as a day
for solemn humiliation, fasting and prayer. Adams asked
the citizens of this country to rest from their labors
and devote as much time as was possible to these activities
of fasting and prayer. The purpose of this proclamation
was to "save our cities and towns from a repetition
of those awful pestilential visitations under which
they have lately suffered so severely." Like the proclamations
of President George Washington who preceded him, President
Adam's proclamations are indicative of the great faith
the leaders of our nation had in Deity. Although by
this time the separation of church and state was squarely
in place, President Adams did not feel that the issuing
of this proclamation violated the First Amendment to
the Constitution. Adams and others recognized the great
dependence that the government and its citizens have
upon the mercies of Almighty God to maintain them from
day to day and preserve the power, strength and justice
of the government.
RJ&L
Religious Institutions Group
As
no truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration,
nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all
ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of
the governing providence of a Supreme Being and of the accountableness
of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributor
of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the
happiness and rectitude of individuals and to the well-being
of communities; as it is also most reasonable in itself
that men who are made capable of social acts and relations,
who owe their improvements to the social state, and who
derive their enjoyments from it, should, as a society, make
their acknowledgments of dependence and obligation to Him
who hath endowed them with these capacities and elevated
them in the scale of existence by these distinctions; as
it is likewise a plain dictate of duty and a strong sentiment
of nature that in circumstances of great urgency and seasons
of imminent danger earnest and particular supplications
should be made to Him who is able to defend or to destroy;
as, moreover, the most precious interests of the people
of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile
designs and insidious acts of a foreign nation, as well
as by the dissemination among them of those principles,
subversive of the foundations of all religious, moral, and
social obligations, that have produced incalculable mischief
and misery in other countries; and as, in fine, the observance
of special seasons for public religious solemnities is happily
calculated to avert the evils which we ought to deprecate
and to excite to the performance of the duties which we
ought to discharge by calling and fixing the attention of
the people at large to the momentous truths already recited,
by affording opportunity to teach and inculcate them by
animating devotion and giving to it the character of a national
act:
For
these reasons I have thought proper to recommend, and I
do hereby recommend accordingly, that Thursday, the 25th
day of April next, be observed throughout the United States
of America as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and
prayer; that the citizens on that day abstain as far as
may be from their secular occupations, devote the time to
the sacred duties of religion in public and in private;
that they call to mind our numerous offenses against the
Most High God, confess them before Him with the sincerest
penitence, implore His pardoning mercy, through the Great
Mediator and Redeemer, for our past transgressions, and
that through the grace of His Holy Spirit we may be disposed
and enabled to yield a more suitable obedience to His righteous
requisitions in time to come; that He would interpose to
arrest the progress of that impiety and licentiousness in
principle and practice so offensive to Himself and so ruinous
to mankind; that He would make us deeply sensible that "righteousness
exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people;"
that He would turn us from our transgressions and turn His
displeasure from us; that He would withhold us from unreasonable
discontent, from disunion, faction, sedition, and insurrection;
that He would preserve our country from the desolating sword;
that He would save our cities and towns from a repetition
of those awful pestilential visitations under which they
have lately suffered so severely, and that the health of
our inhabitants generally may be precious in His sight;
that He would favor us with fruitful seasons and so bless
the labors of the husbandman as that there may be food in
abundance for man and beast; that He would prosper our commerce,
manufactures, and fisheries, and give success to the people
in all their lawful industry and enterprise; that He would
smile on our colleges, academies, schools, and seminaries
of learning, and make them nurseries of sound science, morals,
and religion; that He wold bless all magistrates, from the
highest to the lowest, give them the true spirit of their
station, make them a terror to evil doers and a praise to
them that do well, that He would preside over the councils
of the nation at this critical period, enlighten them to
a just discernment of the public interest, and save them
from mistake, division, and discord; that He would make
succeed our preparations for defense and bless our armaments
by land and by sea; that He would put an end to the effusion
of human blood and the accumulation of human misery among
the contending nations of the earth by disposing them to
justice, to equity, to benevolence, and to peace; and that
he would extend the blessings of knowledge, of true liberty,
and of pure and undefiled religion throughout the world.
And
I do also recommend that with these acts of humiliation,
penitence, and prayer fervent thanksgiving to the Author
of All Good be united for the countless favors which He
is still continuing to the people of the United States,
and which render their condition as a nation eminently happy
when compared with the lot of others.
Given,
etc.
JOHN
ADAMS.
Source:
I A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents
274-76 (James D. Richardson ed., 1897).
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