Proclamation 1256—Thanksgiving Day, 1913

The season is at hand in which it has been our long respected custom as a people to turn in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His manifold mercies and blessings to us as a nation. The year that has just passed has been marked in a peculiar degree by manifestations of His gracious and beneficent providence. We have not only had peace throughout our own borders and with the nations of the world but that peace has been brightened by constantly multiplying evidences of genuine friendship, of mutual sympathy and understanding, and of the happy operation of many elevating influences both of ideal and of practice. The nation has not only been prosperous but has proved its capacity to take calm counsel amidst the rapid movement of affairs and deal with its own life in a spirit of candor, righteousness and comity. We have seen the practical completion of a great work at the Isthmus of Panama which not only exemplifies the nation’s abundant resources to accomplish what it will and the distinguished skill and capacity of its public servants but also promises the beginning of a new age, of new contacts, new neighborhoods, new sympathies, new bonds, and new achievements of cooperation and peace. "Righteousness exalteth a nation" and "peace upon earth, good will towards men" furnish the only foundations upon which can be built the lasting achievements of the human spirit. The year has brought us the satisfactions of work well done and fresh visions of our duty which will make the work of the future better still.

Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday the twenty-seventh of November next as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and invite the people throughout the land to cease from their wonted occupations and in their several homes and places of worship render thanks to almighty God.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and thirteen and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and thirty-eighth.

WOODROW WILSON