Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation (1789)

Summary

Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation of 3 October 1789 is a short public act, issued at the city of New York in the first year of the federal government under the Constitution. Both houses of Congress had asked the president, through a joint committee, to recommend a day of public thanksgiving and prayer. Washington names Thursday, 26 November 1789, and calls the people of the states to devote it to the service of God, whom the proclamation calls the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. The first movement of the text is gratitude. Nations, Washington says, have a duty to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor. The favors he lists are concrete and recent: care for the people before they became a nation; mercies and favorable interpositions in the course and conclusion of the late war; tranquillity, union, and plenty since; the peaceable and rational manner in which constitutions of government, and especially the new national constitution, have been established; civil and religious liberty; and the means of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge. The second movement is petition. The people are asked to pray for pardon of national and other transgressions (the Richardson and Sparks printings used here read "trangressions"); for the faithful performance of public and private duties; for a national government that is a blessing because it is a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly executed and obeyed; for the protection and guidance of other sovereigns and nations, especially those that have shown kindness to the United States; and for the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science, among them and us. The proclamation is not a private devotion only. It is a civic religious document in which the first president, at Congress's request, teaches a young republic to give thanks for political mercies and to ask for the moral conditions of a just government. It does not establish a church, and it does not pretend that liberty is a human invention alone. Students can read it beside the Farewell Address and the 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, which treat religion, virtue, and liberty of conscience in related but distinct keys. The same text is already present in the library's Washington collection; this page presents it as a stand-alone work, with a shorter guide, so that a class can study the proclamation by itself.

Top Lessons

• Thanksgiving as a public act

  The day is recommended to a whole people, not only to a congregation. Washington treats gratitude to God as a fitting civic habit in a republic that has just framed a constitution.

• Naming particular mercies

  The proclamation does not give thanks in general terms only. It names the war’s conclusion, the peaceful writing of constitutions, and civil and religious liberty as gifts to be remembered.

• Asking for more than prosperity

  The prayers ask for pardon, faithful duty, and just laws, not only for plenty. Prosperity is mentioned last, and only as God knows to be best.

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