Ed Vebell (American, 1921 - 2018) "Emancipation Proclamation" Signed lower right. Original Acrylic painting on Illustration Board. Provenance: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation. This painting is the original painting which was published on the Fleetwood Commemorative Cover for Epic Events in American History series issued in 1985. We know almost everything there is to know about Abraham Lincoln, but each generation puts upon him a different stamp of greatness. He was one who, in the words of Stephen Spender, wore at his heart the fire's center, and one who "born of the sun, left the vivid air singed with their honor," In his First Inaugural Address, Lincon said to the South, "We are not enemies, but friends. Passion may have strained, but it must not break our bonds of affection." And when the greatest of rebellions ended, Lincoln saw to it that not one soldier who bore arms against the United States was punished for treason. To freemen and slaves alike he was "Father Abraham." Simple and sincere, he dealt with all equally; not to slaves alone was he the "Great Emancipator." At Gettysburg, and again in his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln reached heights of eloquence unknown since Pericles' Funeral Oration. No other American -- perhaps no other statesman of recent centuries -- has been so celebrated in song and story, in marble monuments; no other has been so loved by all the world. As Boston patrician Charles Francis Adams said of Lincoln's Second Inaugural speech: "Once at Gettysburg and now once again on a greater occasion he has shown a capacity for rising to the demands of the hour which we would not expect from orators of highest school. His inaugural, in its grand simplicity and directness is for all time the historical keynote of the war ... In it a people speak in the sublimely simple utterance of ruder times." Image Size: 19.75 x 22.5 in. Overall Size: 25.75 x 27.25 in. Unframed. (B05764)