Among the thousands of items held by the Bangor Historical Society is a rare lithograph copy of the final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, written in Abraham Lincoln’s hand and sold as part of a fundraising effort for wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War.
That copy — unseen by the general public for at least 30 years — is now on display at the society’s Thomas Hill House Museum on Union Street, just in time for Juneteenth on Monday.
The Bangor Historical Society’s curator Matt Bishop said he knew of the copy’s existence, but little else about it, including how the society acquired it and how long it had owned it.
“We sadly just do not have the provenance for it. We could have had it for only a few decades, or we could have had it for over a century. We lost so many archives in the Great Bangor Fire in 1911 that we may never really know,” Bishop said. “It’s definitely a fun historical mystery that we’d love to find out more about.”
The Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, freeing slaves held in all Confederate states. Freedom did not truly come to all until 1865, however, after the end of the Civil War, and certain Union-occupied states still had slaveholders hanging onto their human chattel. Juneteenth celebrates the day that Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger marched into Galveston, Texas, and informed the slaves there that they were finally free — June 19, 1865.
The society’s copy of Lincoln’s final draft of the order has an interesting backstory. An organization in Chicago was raising money for a Union soldier’s home for the sick and wounded, and asked President Lincoln if they could have his handwritten final draft of the proclamation to auction off for charity. Lincoln agreed, and a wealthy Chicago businessman bought it for $3,000 — more than $55,000 in 2023 dollars.
The new owner of the draft went one step further and hired a lithographer to make limited edition copies of the proclamation, which they then sold for $2, or around $40 in today’s money, also to raise money for the soldier’s home. It’s one of those lithographs that the Bangor Historical Society has, and it’s not known exactly how many other copies of it exist elsewhere around the world. Lincoln’s original handwritten draft was later lost in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
“Libraries and historical societies always seem to be caught up in these terrible fires that seemingly every city has had,” Bishop said. “And it takes with it so much of our history and leaves questions that’ll probably never be answered.”
Regardless, the Bangor Historical Society copy has sat in archives for decades, until Bishop brought it back out earlier this year. It will be on display all summer at the Hill House, which is open Mondays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sundays 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“It’s time that people got to see this again, especially around Juneteenth, which this document is wrapped up in the history of,” Bishop said. “And hopefully we can go back through more of our records and see if we can get to the bottom of how we acquired this.”