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our maid-servants into accomplices of their wicked designs.
Under these circumstances it is my privilege to invite you once more to meet together, and to prostrate yourselves in humble supplication to Him who has been our constant and never-failing support in the past, and to whose protection and guidance we trust for the future.
To this end I, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, do issue this, my proclamation, setting apart Friday, the 27th day of March, as a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer; and I do invite the people of the said States to repair on that day to their usual places of worship, and to join in prayer to Almighty God, that He will graciously restore to our beloved country the blessings of peace and security.
In faith whereof I have hereunto set my hand at the city of Richmond on the twenty-seventh day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three.
Again do I call the people of the Confederacy—a people who believe that the Lord reigneth, and that His overruling Providence ordereth all things—to unite in prayer and humble submission under His chastening hand, and to beseech His favor on our suffering country.
It is meet that when trials and reverses befall us, we should seek to take home to our hearts and consciences the lessons which they teach, and profit by the selfexamination for which they prepare us. Had not our successes on land and sea made us self-confident and forgetful of our reliance on Him?
Had not the love of lucre eaten like a gangrene into the very heart of the land, converting too many among us into worshippers of gain and rendering them unmindful of their duty to their country, to their fellow-men, and to their God?
Who, then, will presume to complain that we have been chastened or to despair of our just cause and the protection of our Heavenly Father?
Let us rather receive in humble thankfulness the lesson which He has taught in our recent reverses, devoutly acknowledging that to Him, and not to our feeble arms, are due the honor and the glory of victory; that from Him, in His paternal providence, comes the anguish of defeat, and that, whether in victory or defeat, our humble supplications are due at His footstool.
Now, therefore, I, Jefferson Davis, President of these Confederate States, do issue this, my proclamation, setting apart Friday, the
