nominee shall be elected he
will at once seize control of the Government. I hope the good people will
permit themselves to suffer no uneasiness on either point. I am struggling
to maintain the Government, not to overthrow it. I am struggling
especially to prevent others from overthrowing it. I therefore say, that
if I live, I shall remain President until the 4th of next March, and that
whoever shall be constitutionally elected, in November, shall be duly
installed as President on the 4th of March, and in the interval I shall do
my utmost that whoever is to hold the helm for the next voyage shall
start with the best possible chance of saving the ship. This is due to
the people, both on principle and under the Constitution. Their will,
constitutionally expressed, is the ultimate law for all. If they should
deliberately resolve to have immediate peace, even at the loss of their
country and their liberties, I know not the power or the right to resist
them. It is their own business, and they must do as they please with their
own. I believe, however, they are still resolved to preserve their country
and their liberties; and in this, in office or out of it, I am resolved to
stand by them. I may add, that in this purpose to save the country and its
liberties, no classes of people seem so nearly unanimous as the soldiers
in the field and the sailors afloat. Do they not have the hardest of it?
Who should quail while they do not? God bless the soldiers and seamen,
with all their brave commanders.

PROCLAMATION OF THANKSGIVING, OCTOBER 20, 1864.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year,
defending us with his guardian care against unfriendly designs from
abroad, and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over
the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly
Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in
their camps, and our sailors on the rivers and seas, with unusual health.
He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by
immigration, while he has opened to us new: sources of wealth, and has
crowned the labor of our working-men in every department of industry with
abundant rewards. Moreover, he has been pleased to animate and inspire our
minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient
for the great trial of civil war into