Let Our Election Support Our Tradition

It seems fitting to me to run President Cleveland’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation at this time, both to mark the coming holiday, and to remind ourselves in preparation for the election how far from our traditional reliance upon God our national leadership has led us.
This proclamation was written on Nov. 2, the day of our election. It is regrettable how effectively this foundational element of America has been attacked from that Nov. 2nd to this Nov. 2nd – little more than one long lifetime ago.
I encourage you to read President Grover Cleveland’s thoughts below.
Art Hall, publisher
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
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The American people have always abundant cause to be thankful to Almighty God, whose watchful care and guiding hand have been manifested in every stage of their national life, guarding and protecting them in time of peril and safely leading them in the hour of darkness and of danger.
It is fitting and proper that a nation thus favored should on one day in every year, for that purpose especially appointed, publicly acknowledge the goodness of God and return thanks to Him for all His gracious gifts.
Therefore, I, Grover Cleveland, president of the United States of America, do hereby designate and set apart Thursday, the 26th day of November instant, as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, and do invoke the observance of the same by all the people of the land.
On that day let all secular business be suspended, and let the people assemble in their usual places of worship and with prayer and songs of praise devoutly testify their gratitude to the Giver of Every Good and Perfect Gift for all that He has done for us in the year that has passed; for our preservation as a united nation and for our deliverance from the shock and danger of political convulsion; for the blessings of peace and for our safety and quiet while wars and rumors of wars have agitated and afflicted other nations of the earth; for our security against the scourge of pestilence, which in other lands has claimed its dead by thousands and filled the streets with mourners; for plenteous crops which reward the labor of the husbandman and increase our nation’s wealth, and for the contentment throughout our borders which follows in the train of prosperity and abundance.
And let there also be on the day thus set apart a reunion of families, sanctified and chastened by tender memories and associations; and let the social intercourse of friends, with pleasant reminiscence, renew the ties of affection and strengthen the bonds of kindly feeling.
And let us by no means forget while we give thanks and enjoy the comforts which have crowned our lives that truly grateful hearts are inclined to deeds of charity, and that a kind and thoughtful remembrance of the poor will double the pleasures of our condition and render our praise and thanksgiving more acceptable in the sight of the Lord.
Done at the city of Washington, this second day of November, 1885, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and tenth.
GROVER CLEVELAND