Proclamation by the President.
It is most that, as a people who acknowledge the supremacy of the living God, we should be ever manful of our dependence on Him; should remember that to Him alone can we trust for our deliverance that to Him is due devout thankfulness but the signal mercies bestowed on us; and that by prayer alone can we hope to secure the continued manifestation of that protecting care which has shielded us in the midst of trials and dangers.
In obedience to His precepts we have from time to time been rathered together with prayers and thanksgiving, and He has been graciously pleased to bear our applications, and to grant abundant exhibitions of His favor to our armies and our people.
Through many conflicts we have now attained a plane among the nations which commands their respect, and to the enemies who encompass of and sack our destruction the
Lord of again taught the lesson of His inspired word.
That the battle is not to the strong, but to He to exalt.
Again our enemy, with loud boasting of the power of their armed and mailed strips, with subjugation, and, with evil machinations, took, even in our own homes and at our own firesides, to pervert our men-servants and 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 falling support int he past, and to whose protection and guidance we trust for the future.
To this J,
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 public worship, and to join in prayer to Almighty God that he will continue His merciful protection over our cause He will scatter our enemies, and set of sought their evil designs, and 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 our thousand eight hundred and sixty three.
