Y’allogy is 1836 percent pure bred, open range guide to the people, places, and past of the great Lone Star. Texan is spoken here. I’d be much obliged if you’d consider riding for the brand as a free or paid subscriber. (Annual subscribers of $50 receive, upon request, a special gift: an autographed copy of my literary western, Blood Touching Blood.)
The Texian people have been objects of the peculiar care and interposition of a Divine Providence.
Sam Houston
Sam Houston wasn’t the father of Texas—that was Stephen F. Austin. Houston was the hero and savior of Texas, assuring Texas’ independence. After defeating Mexican president and general Antonio López de Santa Anna at San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836, Houston was given the moniker, “Old Sam Jacinto.” A few months later, with the fledgling Republic wobbling on flimsy legs, he entered the presidential race. On September 15, after an eleven day campaign, he beat Austin (and Henry Smith) to become the first President of the Republic of Texas. The Republic’s constitution limited the first presidential terms to two years and barred presidents from succeeding themselves. So, on the day of the 1838 inauguration, Houston had no choice but to turn the reins of power over to the next president: his political rival and enemy, Mirabeau B. Lamar. But Houston didn’t have to suffer Lamar long. He was reelected in 1841.
Six weeks after his second inauguration, with a rumored threat that Santa Anna might invade and in the midst of frightening and deadly Comanche raids, the disaster of the Santa Fe Expedition, and an accelerating and uncontrollable national debt, Houston, who in 1840 had married strict Baptist Margaret Moffette Lea, issued a proclamation on January 15, 1842. While the edict is known as Houston’s “National Thanksgiving Day Proclamation,” nowhere in the document does he call on his fellow Texans to give thanks. Rather, Houston calls on them “to set apart . . . a day for devotional exercises.” Specifically, Houston asked them to apportion “the day to religious and Christian worship.”
What follows is Houston’s proclamation, which was published in The Daily Bulletin on January 18 and in the Austin City Gazette on January 26, republished on February 9, 16, and 23.
Recommendation that March 2, be Made a National Thanksgiving Day.
January 17, 1842.
Whereas it has become a custom among the Civilized and Christian nations of the earth to render evidence of national calamities and national blessings by the public manifestation of their respect for the religious observance of certain days for acknowledgement of that feeling which evinces to our fellow men and to nations, that we entertain a profound belief in the existence of an Almighty God, who controls the destinies of the world—whose favors we invoke, and whose wrath we deprecate: and whereas, the Texian people have been objects of the peculiar care and interposition of a Divine Providence; and after the chastisements of His Will, He has manifested His abundant kindness, by enabling them to occupy a place among the independent governments of the earth: Therefore,
Be it known that I, Sam Houston, President of the Republic of Texas, do by these presents, recommend to the good people of Texas to set apart and observe the Second Day of March, 1842, the Anniversary of our National Independence, as a day for devotional exercises; by suspending all temporal avocations and appropriating the day to religious and Christian worship.
Done at the City of Austin, the 15th day of January; in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-two, and in the sixth year of the Independence of the Republic.
Sam Houston
Source:
The Writing of Sam Houston: 1813–1863, vol. 2 (July 16, 1814–March 31, 1842), ed. Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1939), 431.
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