1864 Engraving of President Lincoln's "Proclamation of Emancipation" by Charles Shober, Second Issue

This 1864 engraving features the Emancipation Proclamation in elaborate calligraphic text, with five patriotic vignettes and a small portrait of Lincoln. This is the second issue of this design, with artist and publisher Albert Kidder's New York and Chicago addresses given in the lower left. The portrait gives Lincoln a receding hairline, which was corrected for the third issue, before a copy was presented to the president. On September 22, 1862, five days after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary decree stating that, unless the rebellious states returned to the Union by January 1, freedom would be granted to slaves within those states.  No Confederate states took the offer, and on January 1, 1863 Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation. The Proclamation declared, "all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, a