Abraham Lincoln attached his signature to a Proclamation calling for a “National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.”

On this day, Americans would be encouraged to take time from their daily pursuits and gather to pray for their country. Wrote the President:

“Let us then rest humbly in the hope. . . that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.”