Proclamations

As president, Thomas Jefferson refused to issue Thanksgiving proclamations, even though he had done so as governor of Virginia.

When the war broke out there was something gruesomely comic in the proclamations of emperors and archdukes appealing to that invincible soul of a nation whose existence or moral worth they had been so arrogantly denying for more than a century.

U.S. presidents often change government policy through presidential actions, issuing executive orders, proclamations or memoranda, bypassing Congress and the legislative process.