Emancipation

In a hand-colored print entitled Emancipation, Columbia, the symbolic personification of America, holds aloft a document that ends with the words "Forever Free." Two former slaves, surrounded by the American flag, their chains broken in the foreground, look upon lady liberty. Published in Boston in 1863, this image was lauding the Emancipation Proclamation that had been issued by U.S. president Abraham Lincoln in January of that year. According to that executive order, all slaves in the Confederate states, including Virginia, were declared free.