[African-Americana] [Emancipation Proclamation] Proclamation of Emancipation

New York: Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1865 by A. Kidder in the Clerks Office of the Southern District of N.Y., 1865. Unrecorded variant printing. Broadside, 19 7/8 x 15 3/4 in. (505 x 400 mm). Edges trimmed, touching decorative flourishes at top; dampstaining in right edge and bottom right corner; sheet unevenly toned; small chipping along top and left edges. In period frame, 23 1/2 x 19 3/8 in. (597 x 492 mm). Eberstadt 28-29

Charles Eberstadt, in his Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (New York, 1950), records six overall printings with A. Kidder's design of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, either engraved or lithographed, that were published in both Chicago and New York, and include four broadsides (Nos. 26-29), and two miniatures (Nos. 24-25). This copy is an unrecorded variant printing of Kidder's design. This copy was likely printed sometime after Kidder's 1864 New York edition (Eberstadt 28), and sometime before his 1865 Chicago edition (Eberstadt 29). This copy retains Lincoln's printed facsimile signature that, according to Eberstadt, was later omitted in the 1865 Chicago printing. Kidder's later Chicago address "98 Washington St" is printed on this copy, and its four vignettes match the later Chicago printing (Eberstadt 29). The earlier New York printing has his Chicago address at "86 Dearborn St", and features different vignettes.

"That same month (January 1864), the Chicago lithographer A. Kidder seemed to be speaking for many of the printmakers who would soon enter the emancipation marketplace when he sent Lincoln his new, larger illustrated reproduction of the proclamation, along with a request for a favor. Describing himself as a 'humble Artist,' he wrote: 'I have this day sent you 50 copies of your great Proclamation of Freedom, which has been engraved and Lithographed from designs gotten up by me the taste and ingenuity of which have received the highest commendations of all artists who have seen it. The form in which I have now placed it will enable every American citizen to place it among his household Gods & teach their children how you delivered from bondage a nation in a day.' Kidder asked 'no higher recognition' on the president's part than to have a letter of acknowledgment 'under your own hand & signature which I will then regard higher than any honor or emoluments or any earthly favor.' No reply has surfaced, but under most circumstances, Lincoln characteristically obliged such requests. He may well have done so for Kidder, whose later editions of Emancipation boasted a bold facsimile of the president's signature." (p. 98, Harold Holzer, The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views, 2006)

The Library of Congress records a further variant, not recognized in Eberstadt, that retains Lincoln's signature, the "Northern District of Illinois" imprint, as well as Kidder's later Chicago address (Lincoln, A. [1865] A. Kidder copy of the Emancipation proclamation. Copy 3. A. Kidder, New York and Chicago, Illinois).