By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
In the darkest days of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln shifted the rationale for the conflict, from preserving the Union to freeing the slaves, with a single document.
To mark the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, local groups from the Princeton Public Library to the Princeton Theological Seminary and other others have collaborated on a series of events that include lectures, film screenings and book discussions throughout February.
”Just as 50 years ago, in 1963, the 100th anniversary was a reason for drawing attention to the civil rights issues and the civil rights movement in the United States, so too, today 50 years later, it’s an opportunity to look at race in the United States now that we have our first African-American president,” said John Baxter, a history teacher at Princeton High School who sits on a library committee involved in the celebration.
”I think what we’re saying is, it’s not just enough to commemorate the fact that this happened 150 years ago, but what we really want to do is for people to be thinking about how far we’ve come and perhaps how far we’ve not come,” said Library Director Leslie Burger. “This is still a work in progress.”
One of the highlights is what’s being called a community commemoration of the proclamation on Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. with Pulitzer Prize winning historians James McPherson and Douglas Blackmon at the Princeton High School Performing Arts Center.
Other events include the seminary’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. lecture on Feb. 4 at 8 p.m., this year given by Rice University professor Anthony Pinn; a worship service and concert on Feb.7 at the seminary; film screenings and discussions at the Public Library on Feb. , 13 and 22. A major event, Feb.9, is a black history month, invitation-only gala at Princeton University from 7 to 9 p.m.
A list of events can be found at the seminary website, www.ptsem.edu.
Teddy Reeves, a senior at the seminary, also serves as president of the seminary’s Association of Black Seminarians. He said Monday that he had never seen locally the level of cooperation between all the entities participating in the celebration.
The proclamation was a war powers act of the president, a document that freed slaves in the south but not in border states such as Kentucky. Lincoln waited to issue the document until there was a military victory, one that finally came at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland in September 1862. The costly Union victory, thwarting a Confederate invasion, gave the president the opportunity he was looking for.
The proclamation was issued Jan.1, 1863.
In “Cross Roads of Freedom,” his book about the battle, Mr. McPherson wrote that the “symbolic power of the proclamation changed the war from one to restore the old Union into one to destroy the old Union and build a new one purged of human bondage.”

