“Every year in our country, the legal and social equality of all
races continues to come closer to our ideal,” said James M.
Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Presidential
Library and Museum. “The great break with the past, the seminal
event, the leap forward, began with Lincoln's pen in September
1862. People at the time - black or white, American or European,
North or South - knew this, and their experience tells us to
celebrate this document and its anniversary.” The Emancipation
Proclamation is one of the officially printed commemorative
copies that Lincoln signed in full, along with Secretary of
State William Seward and Lincoln’s private secretary, John G.
Nicolay. The President signed the original Emancipation
Proclamation in private with only a few witnesses at his side –
no “photo opportunity” as we like to say today. It is fortunate
that the commemorative printing was ordered, because Lincoln’s
original manuscript was lost in the Chicago Fire of 1871. The
Proclamation measures appro