Adams Family Correspondence, volume 10
I wish you a happy New Year, and a Repetition of happy New Years as long as Time shall endure: not here below, because I shall want you in another Country, better than this.
What do you say? shall I keep a national Thanksgiving with you?1 I hope before that Day We shall have good News from all our Family, tho We cannot be all together.
Compliments of the Season to Louisa & all my good friends. Dont forget my farm next time you write. I hope to find a Letter at the senate Chamber
Adieu
RC (Adams Papers).
On 1 Jan. the president issued a proclamation designating 19 Feb. as a national day of thanksgiving and prayer, in order for Americans to “meet together and render their sincere and hearty thanks to the great Ruler of nations, for the manifold and signal mercies, which distinguish our lot as a nation, particularly, for the possession of constitutions of government, which unite, and, by their union, establish liberty with order; for the preservation of peace, foreign and domestic; for the seasonable control, which has been given to a spirit of disorder, in the suppression of the late insurrection; and, generally, for the prosperous course of our affairs.” Published first in the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 1 Jan., the proclamation appeared in Boston newspapers the following week, beginning with the Federal Orrery, 8 January.