Released to collectors November 9, 2014, along with
Doolittle Raiders, Lydia Mendoza, O. Henry, and Jimmy Stewart
Emancipation
Proclamation
First Day of Issue
$17
In the 24 years of painting covers, I have never painted a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln. Interestingly, the Emancipation Proclamation did not declare free all the slaves in America, rather only those slaves held by the "rebellious" states, hence the south. In time though, it did lead to the 13th Amendment.
BEVIL ISSUE
SCOTT
CATEGORY
CANCELLED
LOCATION
PAINTED
MAIN LOT
ARTIST’S PROOFS
AFDCS VARIETY
COFFEE BREAK
ISSUE TOTAL SIZE
601
4721
First Day of Issue
January 1, 2013
Washington, D.C. 20066
November 2014
150
10
1
1
162
The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. With the text covering 5 pages, the document was first tied with narrow, red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains. Parts of the seal are decipherable, but other parts have worn off. The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. In 1936, the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States. Lincoln initially proposed the idea of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet in the summer of 1862 as a war measure to cripple the Confederacy. He surmised that if the slaves in the Southern states were freed, then the Confederacy could no longer use them as laborers to support the army in the field, thus hindering the effectiveness of the Confederate war effort. Lincoln needed to prove that the Union government could enforce the Proclamation and protect the freed slaves. On September 22, 1862, following the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and would go into effect 3 months later on January 1, 1863. President Lincoln announced, “that all persons held as slaves, within the rebellious areas are, and henceforth shall be free.”
Read the article in its entirety in the 6-page November 2014 Bevil newsletter, which accompanies the cover.
