Proclamation 2208—Thanksgiving Day

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-sixth day of November, 1936, as a day of national thanksgiving.

The observance of a day of general thanksgiving by all the people is a practice peculiarly our own, hallowed by usage in the days before we were a nation and sanctioned through succeeding years.

Having safely passed through troubled waters, it is our right to express our gratitude that Divine Providence has vouchsafed us wisdom and courage to overcome adversity. Our free institutions have been maintained with no abatement of our faith in them. In our relations with other peoples we stand not aloof but make resolute effort to promote international friendship and, by the avoidance of discord, to further world peace, prosperity, and happiness.

Coupled with our grateful acknowledgment of the blessings it has been our high privilege to enjoy, we have a deepening sense of our solemn responsibility to assure for ourselves and our descendants a future more abundant in faith and in security.

Let us, therefore, on the day appointed, each in his own way, but together as a whole people, make due expression of our thanksgiving and humbly endeavor to follow in the footsteps of Almighty God.

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

Done at the City of Washington this 12th day of November, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and sixty-first.

FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT

By the President:
R. WALTON MOORE
Acting Secretary of State.