A Fireside Chat: Looking at the Emancipation Proclamation
Friday, September 21, 2012
7:00 PM — 9:00 PM
University of Mary Washington
Dodd Auditorium
Fredericksburg, VA
The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln on September 22, 1862, days following the bloody Battle of Antietam. It became effective January 1, 1863 as the nation entered its third year of civil war, forever changing the course of the war and the future of the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation will forever be known as one of the great American documents of freedom.
Join the nation’s foremost scholars as they gather to interpret, evaluate, and remember the Emancipation Proclamation as its 150th anniversary begins.
Edna Greene Medford, professor and chair of the Department of History at Howard University
Frank Williams, Chief Justice Emeritus of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island and member of the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission
Harold Holzer, chairman of the Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and vice-president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
With introductory remarks by James I. Robertson, Jr., participants will discuss the Emancipation Proclamation from three distinct perspectives:
- The legal, political, and military pressures on Lincoln
- The historical influence of and response to the proclamation by African Americans
- The role pictorial images played afterward in establishing the document and its author in public memory
