(Peterboro, NY – Dec. 2015) As the month and year of the 150th Anniversary of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment comes to a close, Owen Corpin will once again, prepare the watch fire and provide the program for the Watch Night commemoration at 4 p.m. Wednesday Dec. 31. The program will begin at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road in Peterboro and will move to the watch fire site on the Peterboro Green.
Retired Navy Commander Owen Corpin, a descendant of 19th Century freedom seekers who came to Peterboro, will remind visitors of the long wait through the night of Dec. 31, 1862 to see if President Abraham Lincoln would release the Emancipation Proclamation on the following day to free the slaves in the states in rebellion. Lincoln had shared his first draft with his Cabinet as early as Sept. 22, 1862. A facsimile of that Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation gifted to the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum by the New York State Museum will be on display at the Smithfield Community Center. The First Steps to Freedom: Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation brochures from Albany explaining the document and Gerrit Smith’s role in preserving the treasure will be distributed.
Corpin organized the first Watch Night commemoration on the Sesquicentennial of that night.
The Emancipation Proclamation freed only the slaves in the southern states, but the Thirteenth Amendment declared that neither slavery not involuntary servitude . . . . shall exist within the United States(.) The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments followed within the next five years and were the constitutional foundations of Civil Rights. Changing America, an exhibit developed by a collaboration of the American Library Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian to show the relationship between Lincoln’s emancipation document and the March on Washington in 1963 will be on display June 1 through July 15 at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF) in Peterboro. NAHOF is one of 50 sites in the nation that will install the temporary exhibit.
The public is encouraged to join in this free Sesquicentennial observance of the Thirteenth Amendment and the Emancipation Proclamation. The public is encouraged to dress warmly and bring a flashlight.
For more information: Owen Corpin at 315-750-6561 or nahofm1835@gmail.com.