In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared a National Day of Humiliation. And this is what he said.
“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers and wealth and power, as no other Nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched us. And we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace. Too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended power to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) as recounted on January 31, 2007 in the Congressional Record, V. Pt. 2 (January 18, 2007 to February 1, 2007) 2800.