Item No. 5197710

Scarce Civil War CDV titled “Emancipation,” published in Boston in 1863 by John Sowle after an allegorical painting by Massachusetts artist George G. Fish. Issued in the same year as Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the image depicts Columbia holding the American flag and presenting the proclamation while two formerly enslaved African Americans kneel beside her with broken chains at their feet. Rich in patriotic symbolism, the composition celebrates emancipation as one of the Union’s central wartime achievements.

The mount is printed below the image, “Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1863, by John Sowle…” and titled “EMANCIPATION.” The reverse is imprinted, “From the original, by G. G. Fish. Photographed by J. P. Soule, Boston.” Examples are held by the Library of Congress and the Library Company of Philadelphia. An increasingly desirable Civil War patriotic CDV combining themes of emancipation, Union victory, and African American history.