Emancipation Proclamation Now on View
A rare hand-signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, on loan from the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, is on view through December 21 as part of the exhibit, Lincoln: The Man You Didn’t Know. The exhibit is presented by The Museums at Washington and Chapin, comprising the Center for History and Studebaker National Museum, and is open through February 28, 2010.

"The Emancipation Proclamation is arguably one of the best known documents in American history," states Randy Ray, the Center for History’s executive director. "Many people know that it was written by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and that through it, slavery was abolished."

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." The freedom promised by the Emancipation Proclamation depended upon Union military victory. According to the U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, it "fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become the liberators."

In June 1864, over a year after the initial official printings of the Emancipation Proclamation, two new editions were printed in Philadelphia for Charles Godfrey Leland and George H. Boker. Copies of these editions were signed by President Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of State William H. Seward, and Lincoln’s private secretary, John G. Nicolay, for use as fundraisers at the Great Central Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia. Here they were offered for sale at $10 each. It is a copy from this edition that is on view at the Center for History.

Lincoln: The Man You Didn’t Know has been endorsed by the Indiana Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission as an official project and is sponsored by National City, South Bend Tribune, Villing and Company, Inc., WSBT Radio Group, and AT&T Real Yellow Pages.

A series of Lincoln-related lectures, films and theatrical performances are taking place throughout the period the exhibit is on view.