The Great Emancipator and the Great Central Fair Exhibition at Penn Libraries |
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January 20, 2015, Volume 61, No. 19 |
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A flag from Lincoln and Hamlin’s 1860 presidential campaign will be on view in the exhibition. |
The Emancipation Proclamation looms large in the minds of Americans. Remembered popularly as the document that freed over three million slaves, it was a testament to America’s commitment to liberty and equality, to right over wrong, a promissory note to a new birth of American freedom. But the Emancipation Proclamation also had other characteristics—it was a military document that treated the abolition of slavery as a military necessity rather than a moral issue and it was a political document that authorized the service of black soldiers in the United States military for the first time in the nation’s history. The Proclamation has been understood, misunderstood and interpreted in various ways by contemporary citizens in the nineteenth century, as well as by historians and everyday Americans since its publication. The copies of the Proclamation that were printed in newspapers across the country and distributed across the plantations and countryside of the South served a practical purpose: informing Americans of President Lincoln’s formidable act. Almost as quickly as the message of the Proclamation had been absorbed by the people, the document became the basis for commemoration and artistic expression.
The Penn Libraries is exhibiting a wealth of materials that highlight the Emancipation Proclamation as both a document and a deed. In 1864, as the meaning of the proclamation began to crystallize both for the millions in bondage and for the country at large, 48 specially-printed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation, autographed by President Lincoln, were put on sale in Philadelphia at the Great Central Fair. The Penn Libraries’ exhibit features two of these 48 copies, reunited for the first time since they were offered in 1864 for $10 each. One copy is from the Penn Libraries’ collections; the second is generously on loan from the private collection of Ian and Sonnet McKinnon, along with a congressional manuscript copy of the Thirteenth Amendment signed by all the members of Congress who voted for the Amendment, President Lincoln and Vice President Hamlin. The McKinnons believe in the importance of public access to these powerful historic documents as an enlightening experience, one that is valuable not only for scholars but for all interested parties.
Additional items on display include miniature pamphlet printings of the Proclamation which were distributed by union troops to newly freed men, women and children. A host of commemorative objects related to Philadelphia’s role in the wartime effort and the effect of the Proclamation on the lives of African Americans are also on view. The documents and items in the exhibit speak not only to the monumental scope of the Proclamation, its dissemination and its place in the minds of wartime Americans, but to the power its words would come to represent.
The exhibit and loan of the Emancipation Proclamation document were made possible thanks to Wendy Commins Holman, W’97, and the Orrery Society Council of the Penn Libraries. The Orrery Society Council works to expand University and alumni awareness of the importance the Libraries’ collections play in helping the University achieve its scholarly mission and to increase the Libraries’ collections through endowments, annual gifts in support of collections and gifts in-kind.
The Great Emancipator and the Great Central Fair is on exhibit January 20-February 27, 2015, in the Goldstein Family Gallery in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts on the 6th floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center at 3420 Walnut Street. The exhibit is free and open to the public (show ID at entrance). Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Wednesday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.
There will be an opening reception on January 29. For more information, please contact friends@pobox.upenn.edu
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