Engraving, "The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation Before the Cabinet" 1866

Following the American Civil War, this engraving commemorated a crucial event and became popular for classroom display across the country. It illustrates President Abraham Lincoln's first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet officers on July 22, 1862. Seated with papers in his lap, he is surrounded by the members of his cabinet. Text printed below the image identifies the men, left to right, as Edwin M. Stanton (Secretary of War), Salmon P. Chase (Secretary of the Treasury), President Lincoln, Gideon Welles (Secretary of the Navy), Caleb Smith (Secretary of the Interior), William H. Seward (profile, Secretary of State), Montgomery Blair (Postmaster General), and Edward Bates (Attorney General). Alexander Hay Ritchie engraved this large black-and-white print in 1866 based on the painting that Francis Bicknell Carpenter made in 1864 for display in the White House. For the many American abolitionists, the Emancipation Proclamation publicly announced by Lincoln in September 1862 to become law on January 1, 1863, was the essential first legal step in eliminating slavery throughout the United States. For the almost four million enslaved Americans, it gave them the hope of freedom and becoming equal citizens in the country they labored for so long to build and maintain.