The Museum of the Albemarle will exhibit the 13th Amendment beginning January 25, 2013 in Under Both Flags: Civil War in the Albemarle. To highlight the document, the Museum will host Gerald J. Prokopowicz, Ph.D. at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 27, 2013. Dr. Prokopowicz will discuss the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Lincoln in its final form on January 1, 1863.
The Emancipation Proclamation declared “all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a state that people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery, but would be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery.
The 13th Amendment was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865 and ratified by the states on December 6, North Carolina. The Amendment declares that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Gerald J. Prokopowicz is the author of Did Lincoln Own Slaves? (2008) and All for the Regiment: The Army of the Ohio, 1861-1862 (2001), as well as the online host of Civil War Talk Radio. He served for nine years as the resident Lincoln Scholar at the Lincoln Museum, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he helped create the award-winning exhibit, “Abraham Lincoln and the American Experiment,” and edited Lincoln Lore.
Dr. Prokopowicz is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Lincoln Studies Center, the Lincoln Forum, and the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. He holds a law degree from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. He is currently a professor and chair of the history department at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.
This is a free family program. For more information call (252) 335-1453. The Museum of the Albemarle is a unit of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources. For more information on North Carolina arts, history and culture, visit Cultural Resources online.