This is the text of the November 15, 1909 William Howard Taft
national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation.
President of the United States of America.
The season of the year has returned when,
in accordance with the reverent custom established by our forefathers, the
people of the United States are wont to meet in their usual places of worship
on a day of thanksgiving appointed by the Civil Magistrate to return thanks to
God for the great mercies and benefits which they have enjoyed.
During this past
year we have been highly blest. No great calamities of flood or tempest or
epidemic sickness have befallen us. We have lived in quietness, undisturbed by
wars or the rumors of wars. Peace and the plenty of bounteous crops and of
great industrial production animate a cheerful and resolute people to all the
renewed energies of beneficent industry and material and moral progress. It is
altogether fitting that we should humbly and gratefully acknowledge the divine
source of these blessings.
appoint Thursday, the twenty-fifth day of November, as a day of general
thanksgiving, and I call upon the people on that day, laying aside their usual
vocations, to repair to their churches and unite in appropriate services of
praise and thanks to Almighty God.
In Witness Whereof
I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be
Done at the City of Washington this fifteenth day of November, in the
year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nine and of the independence of
the United States the one hundred and thirty-fourth.
Wm H Taft
Secretary of State.