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 etween the Napoleonic wars of the early nineteenth century and World War I, the Civil War was the greatest military conflict in the western world, costing 600,000 lives. Modern history's first total war, it resulted in the emancipation of four million enslaved African Americans.
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"President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation," Lithograph, 1864. GLC 742
President Lincoln signed only three copies of this printing of the Emancipation Proclamation, produced in San Francisco and designed by a fourteen-year-old boy. Hannah Johnson, the daughter of a fugitive slave, wrote President Lincoln about his Emancipation Proclamation, "When you are dead and in Heaven, in a thousand years that action of yours will make the Angels sing your praises...." |
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Thirteenth Amendment Resolution. February 1, 1865. GLC 263
The Emancipation Proclamation freed only those slaves in states still at war. As a wartime order, it could have been subsequently reversed by presidential decree or congressional legislation. The permanent emancipation of all slaves therefore required a constitutional amendment, which was ratified in December 1865.
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"The Fifteenth Amendment Celebrated May 19th 1870," Lithograph, 1870. GLC 2917
The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, declared that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. This hand-colored lithograph by Thomas Kelly depicts a parade held in Baltimore, Maryland, to celebrate the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. |
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