Commander in Chief & Great Emancipator

Photograph

Boston Music Hall. Grand Jubilee Concert…in honor of the day! The proclamation! The emancipation of the slave! The spirit of the fathers and the constitution! Boston, [1862?].

There were many celebrations held in the North to mark the Emancipation Proclamation.  On 1 January 1863, the day the proclamation became official, the Boston Music Hall served as a venue for a celebratory concert, the proceeds of which were intended to “benefit the freed slaves” under the auspices of an “Educational Commission.”  The commission’s membership included many prominent individuals from the Boston area, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Francis Parkman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Eliot Norton, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

*AB85.H7375.A863n    Source unknown, 1927.