Emancipation Proclamation No. 1

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    ... all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free ...

    The Emancipation Proclamation was an Executive Order issued on January 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln. His authority to issue the Executive Order came from Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, which states that the President is the "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States."

    Lincoln did not free all the slaves in the United States. He only freed the slaves in the following territories held by the Confederate States:

    • Arkansas
    • Texas
    • Louisiana (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans)
    • Mississippi
    • Alabama
    • Florida
    • Georgia
    • South Carolina
    • North Carolina
    • Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth)

    A lot of people claimed that Lincoln, as President of the United States of America (USA), had no authority to free slaves in the states belonging to theConfederate States of America (CSA). However, the practical effect was that it commited the USA to abolishing slavery in all states. Lincoln's unilateral decision was not popular with everyone in the North.

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    1. “Caveman Chuck” Coker 56 months ago | reply

      Here's my secret recipe:

      I started with a photo of the Emancipation Proclamation. (I used this same technique for the other documents.) I cropped it to the area and size I wanted to end up with and saved it.

      I opened the saved file with GIMP and used Colors > Desaturate to make it black-and-white. Then I opened a second copy of the image in GIMP and used Edit > Copy to copy it to the clipboard.

      I went back to the first image and used Layer > New Layer, with a transparent background, to create a second layer. Then I pasted the color image from the clipboard onto the second layer.

      Then I selected the Eraser Tool and chose the Clipboard brush. I used the brush to erase all of the layer I just pasted. The photo should now look like the black-and-white image.

      Then I went back to the Erase Tool and selected the Vine brush and checked the Anti Erase checkbox. Then I took the brush and ran it over the places I wanted to have in color.

      When I was happy with the colored areas, I selected the Move Tool and clicked the mouse somewhere on the image to deselect the colored parts. (There must be some other way to do this, but I don't know what it is yet.)

      Then I used Filters > Light and Shadow > Drop Shadow to add the drop shadow and saved the final product.

      The orange-brown color is the color of the original document. If you want to, you can tweak the brightness, contrast, and saturation levels, and anything else you want to do to the final image.

      I'm still new at GIMP and still learning things, so there may be a better way to do this. I discovered this by trial and error and liked the way it looked. I'm sure you must be able to do this with Photoshop too.

      If you try this, let me know how it works. And let me know if I left any steps out, too.

    2. Jibby! 56 months ago | reply

      Gorgeous job on the photo. You do these well. As for Lincoln, he wasn't the saintly man of virtue many make him out to be, but he by far my favorite dead President. If you've never read his letters I'd recommend them. He really knew how to write from the heart. An amazing man.

    3. paul.vreeland 56 months ago | reply

      Thanks for your explanation. I find that it is the quality of the edge you give to the coloured section that gives the work a sense of fragility. That may be more artful than the layering technique. Did you also use a grunge layer? I appreciate your comments because they help me to learn Gimp.

    4. “Caveman Chuck” Coker 56 months ago | reply

      There are lots of fascinating things that can be found at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

      When the Erase tool is selected, the "Vine" brush that comes with GIMP makes it easy to do the ragged edges.

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