Delivered March 6, 1799 by President John Adams
As no truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration, nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of the governing providence of a Supreme Being and of the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributer of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the happiness and rectitude of individuals and to the well-being of communities; as it is also most reasonable in itself that men who are made capable of social acts and relations, who owe their improvements to the social state, and who derive their enjoyments from it, should, as a society, make their acknowledgments of dependence and obligation to Him who hath endowed them with these capacities and elevated them in the scale of existence by these distinctions; as it is likewise a plain dictate of duty and a strong sentiment of nature that in circumstances of great urgency and seasons of imminent danger earnest and particular supplications should be made to Him who is able to defend or to destroy; as, moreover, the most precious interests of the people of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile designs and insidious acts of a foreign nation, as well as by the dissemination among them of those principles, subversive of the foundations of all religious, moral, and social obligations, that have produced incalculable mischief and misery in other countries; and as, in fine, the observance of special seasons for public religious solemnities is happily calculated to avert the evils which we ought to deprecate and to excite to the performance of the duties which we ought to discharge by calling and fixing the attention of the people at large to the momentous truths already recited, by affording opportunity to teach and inculcate them by animating devotion and giving to it the character of a national act:
For these reasons I have thought proper to recommend, and I do hereby recommend accordingly, that Thursday, the 25th day of April next, be observed throughout the United States of America as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer; that the citizens on that day abstain as far as may be from their secular occupations, devote the time to the sacred duties of religion in public and in private; that they call to mind our numerous offenses against the Most High God, confess them before Him with the sincerest penitence, implore His pardoning mercy, through the Great Mediator and Redeemer, for our past transgressions, and that through the grace of His Holy Spirit we may be disposed and enabled to yield a more suitable obedience to His righteous requisitions in time to come; that He would interpose to arrest the progress of that impiety and licentiousness in principle and practice so offensive to Himself and so ruinous to mankind; that He would make us deeply sensible that “righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people;” that He would turn us from our transgressions and turn His displeasure from us; that He would withhold us from unreasonable discontent, from disunion, faction, sedition, and insurrection; that He would preserve our country from the desolating sword; that He would save our cities and towns from a repetition of those awful pestilential visitations under which they have lately suffered so severely, and that the health of our inhabitants generally may be precious in His sight; that He would favor us with fruitful seasons and so bless the labors of the husbandman as that there may be food in abundance for man and beast; that He would prosper our commerce, manufactures, and fisheries, and give success to the people in all their lawful industry and enterprise; that He would smile on our colleges, academies, schools, and seminaries of learning, and make them nurseries of sound science, morals, and religion; that He would bless all magistrates, from the highest to the lowest, give them the true spirit of their station, make them a terror to evil doers and a praise to them that do well; that He would preside over the councils of the nation at this critical period, enlighten them to a just discernment of the public interest, and save them from mistake, division, and discord; that He would make succeed our preparations for defense and bless our armaments by land and by sea; that He would put an end to the effusion of human blood and the accumulation of human misery among the contending nations of the earth by disposing them to justice, to equity, to benevolence, and to peace; and that he would extend the blessings of knowledge, of true liberty, and of pure and undefiled religion throughout the world.
And I do also recommend that with these acts of humiliation, penitence, and prayer fervent thanksgiving to the Author of All Good be united for the countless favors which He is still continuing to the people of the United States, and which render their condition as a nation eminently happy when compared with the lot of others.
Given etc.
JOHN ADAMS
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor — and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.
After the murder of American hostage and aide worker Peter Kassig by members of the Islamist terror group ISIS, Obama claimed that Christians were more responsible for terrorism than Muslims are.
Well, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is proving that he is a good anti-American liberal. In a recent comment he noted that all the world’s problems were cause by the USA.
The faux President of the United States on the ABC TV show Scandal gave one of those typically left-wing TV speeches that is more like an uninformed screed meant to push a leftist agenda than truthful commentary. In this case the actor pretending to be president scorned the Second Amendment and then said incorrectly that slavery was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
After a Muslim convert in Oklahoma murdered a fellow co-worker at a food processing plant by beheading her, authorities there rushed to TV to claim that it was *just* workplace violence and that the Muslim murderer is not a terrorist. Since then we’ve seen every example of how this monster was a committed radical Islamist which makes him a terrorist whether he’s connected to a particular group or not yet our leaders are burying their heads in the sand and refusing to admit the truth.
PBS and documentary maker Ken Burns have done it again with a wonderful look at the political lives of Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt. But if the series did anything it revealed to a discerning viewer how Franklin rebuilt the presidency on a pillar of hate and lies and remade the Democrat Party into a party driven by purposeful misdirection and deceit.
A Tulsa police officer who was suspended and punished for refusing to attend Muslim religious services at a local mosque that has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood is suing his employer for ordering him to attend over his religious objections.
Officials in Austria have gone public with fears that the terror group ISIS may be finding a new wave of recruits among its teenaged girls after a number of girls have run away from home intending to join ISIS forces in Iraq or Syria. Unfortunately, Austria isn’t alone teens are fleeing countries all across the west to join jihadis.
On Tuesday, Obama administration officials testified that local police who received surplus military equipment from a government program were never supposed to use that equipment for riot control and if the items were misused, cities may be forced to repay millions in grants given them by the government to purchase the equipment.
It has been 13 years since that horrible day in 2001 when terrorism hit America with a vengeance. But many want to forget and pretend it never happened and we already have a generation of kinds just about to, or soon to enter into their teen years who can’t remember what happened on September 11, 2001. It is up to us to keep the memory of that day alive lest we allow it to be repeated.
Supposed Muslim “cleric” Anjam Choudary, a man who is often seen on TV as the leading voice of Muslims in Britain, thought it would be hilarious to make a joke about 9/11 and other famous terror attacks on CNN on Tuesday.
Leave it to leftist Illinois to use a museum dedicated to celebrating Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents in history, as a platform to celebrate a loser like Adlai Stevenson while at the same time ignoring Ronald Reagan, a native son, big winner, and another greatest president.
Looks like the Obamaites are once again attempting to tech our children that the U.S. is an evil country with new nationalized “history” standards for our schools that eliminate the founding fathers and focuses only on a relentlessly negative interpretation of the birth of the country.
One school in California is taking away a useful class and replacing it with PC garbage by eliminating geography in favor of “diversity” training.
The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens has an excellent, clarifying piece explaining why if you support the so-called Palestinians that you are pretty much a moron, and an immoral moron at that. And he is dead on, too.
So, imagine an article that claims to list the “top five” most “dangerous guns in America” that essentially lists every gun ever made then stuffs its descriptions full of factually incorrect statements about gun history and simple reality and you’ll have the dumbest list yet to appear on the extremist left-wing Rolling Stone website.
It is well known that John Adams had imagined that July second would be the day that future generations of Americans would remember as their day of independence from England, the nation’s birthday, if you will. It was, after all, on the second that it was proclaimed “(T)hat these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
Today America enjoys the celebration of 238 years of existence as a nation by noting the day we declared our independence from our Mother nation, England. Sadly, that celebration has, for too many, become the “July Fourth” holiday, a day of picnics, rote parades, “white sales,” and for some a day off work. Of course, we should not and don’t celebrate any “July Fourth.” We celebrate Independence Day, the day we formally separated from our parent nation and took those first unsteady steps into the world as a nation of our own.
A museum in New Mexico used tax dollars to put on a celebration of Charles Darwin and atheism this year that has religious folks up in arms. And if the fight over religion is schools has any legitimacy at all, this museum should be slapped down for spending tax dollars on promoting the religious views of atheists.
Hillary Clinton is an Illinois girl, right? Oh, and Hillary Clinton is the smartest woman in the world, isn’t she? Then how come she thinks Abraham Lincoln got elected to the Senate before he became President, when he never did?
A bombshell new book about the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis claims that she had a robust sex life before and after her life with President John Kennedy. But the book shocks readers with the claim that Jackie O also had numerous sex partners during her marriage to the president and even had affairs with his own brothers.
A few years after the Civil War as the nation started upon its long road toward reconciliation, rebuilding, and healing the wife of one of the war’s union generals noticed the touching devotion of Confederate widows, wives and their children as each year they came together to place flowers and little flags at the graves of their fallen. Mary Simmerson Cunningham Logan was so moved by the devotion she witnessed that she urged her husband, Illinois General John A. “Blackjack” Logan, to look into creating what was to become Memorial Day.
HEADQUARTERS GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
Sometimes a celebrity will Tweet something, so blatantly a-historical, something so totally outrageous and insensible, that even they realize how bad it is and will try to delete it right away. But someone will always be there to preserve the evidence.
As a conservative it is easy to look at Washington and find nothing but despair. Socialism is once again on the march with autocratic Democrats and left leaning “Republicans” all seeking to raise taxes, spend more, destroy the integrity of our borders, eviscerate our military, spy on us all, and impose a one-size-fits-all education scheme. In DC, the Democrats are practically indistinguishable from the Republicans. But a bright spot is seen in those states who are rebelling over this top down control by liberalizing gun laws, restricting abortion, and otherwise beginning to look for ways to assert their long dormant powers.
The Confederate flag has a very long and controversial history, to be sure. But a recent CBS report on a flag dustup in a school in Missouri shows just how slipshod journalism is today.