Editor’s Note: John Hancock, third governor of Massachusetts, issued this proclamation of a day of thanksgiving to be observed Dec. 11, 1783. It was issued following the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War, and the observance would roughly coincide with the British evacuation of New York.

Running to become the first Catholic president of the United States in 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy told an audience of wary Protestant ministers that “if the time should come … when my office would require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office.”