PHOTO OF THE DAY: DAY OF THANKS

The setting sun lights up the November sky west of Freeman — a representation of the spectacular colors of fall and the Thanksgiving season.

To commemorate this day, we are reprinting below President Theodore Roosevelt’s Thanksgiving Day proclamation of 1903, which was published in the Freeman Courier on Nov. 19 of that year.

Washington: Nov. 1st the president issued the following Thanksgiving proclamation: The season is on hand when according to the custom of our people it falls upon the President to appoint a day of praise and thanksgiving to God.

During the last year the Lord has dealt bountifully with us, giving us peace at home and abroad and a chance for our citizens to work for their welfare unhindered by war, famine or plague. It behooves us not only to rejoice greatly because of what has been given us, but to accept it with a solemn sense of responsibility, realizing that under Heaven it rests with ourselves to show that we are worthy to use a right what has thus been entrusted to our care.

In no other place and at no other time has the experiment of a government of the people by the people and for the people been tried on so vast a scale as here in our own country in the opening years of the twentieth century. Failure would not only be a dreadful thing for us, but a dreadful thing for all mankind, because it would mean a loss of hope for all who believe in the power and righteousness of liberty. Therefore, in thanking God for the mercies extended to us in the past, we beseech Him that He may not withhold them in the future and that our hearts may be aroused to war steadfastly for good and against all the forces of evil, public and private.

We pray for strength and light, so that in this coming year we may with cleanliness, fearlessness and wisdom do our allotted work on earth in such a manner as to show that we are not altogether unworthy of blessings we have received.

Now therefore I, Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States, do hereby designate as a day of general thanksgiving Thursday, the 26th of the coming November, and do recommend that throughout the land the people cease from their wonted occupation and in their several homes and places of worship render thanks unto the Almighty God for his manifold mercies.

 

Theodore Roosevelt Jr., often referred to as Teddy, served as United States President from 1901 to 1909.