This Month at the MHS

In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, this exhibition features the pen Abraham Lincoln used to sign the document. Visitors can learn how the MHS acquired this extraordinary pen as well as view paintings, broadsides, engravings, and manuscripts that tell the story of how Boston celebrated Emancipation.

View documents and artifacts related to Abraham Lincoln. Featured items include Lincoln's letter to Joshua F. Speed explaining his evolving views on slavery as well as the casts of the life mask and hands of Lincoln made by Leonard Volk in the spring of 1860.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

Discussion will focus on two seminar papers: “African American and Indian Church Affiliation: Reevaluating Race and Religion in the North, 1730-1776,” by Richard Boles of George Washington University, and  “A World of Deference and Dependence: Slavery and Unfreedom in Eighteenth-century Boston,” by Jared Hardesty of Boston College. Boles’s paper explores black and Indian participation in each major Protestant denomination, suggesting the need to reevaluate aspects of the religious history of the colonial North in regard to how blacks and Indians influenced theology and church practices. Hardesty’s essay aims to raise serious questions about the nature of freedom in the American Colonies by engaging the literature concerning liberty in early America and challenging the popular slave/free dichotomy that dominates the historiography.

Internationally famous author, pioneering Unitarian, rural and urban benevolent worker, sister to six siblings, active aunt to 37 nieces and nephews, and prolific correspondent, Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s fascinating life deserves a full-length biography. With over 4,000 letters in addition to personal journals at the MHS, there is much to examine. In her brown bag talk Lucinda Damon-Bach will share some of the questions and discoveries to date that are helping her to clear up misconceptions and prepare a long-overdue book about Sedgwick’s life and work.

In March 1861, when Lincoln delivered his First Inaugural, neither he nor many in the audience envisioned that four years later, at his Second, the eradication of slavery would be imminent. What events led to the Emancipation Proclamation? And what would follow as Lincoln led the nation toward his “king’s cure for all the evils,” the Thirteenth Amendment? On the eve of Lincoln’s birthday, William Martin will explore Lincoln’s passage from the careful Constitutional lawyer of the First Inaugural to the almost messianic figure of the Second. An MHS Fellow,  Mr. Martin has written novels that appear on the New York Times bestsellers list, as well as scripts for television and film.

Reservations requested. Please click on the RSVP link above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0560 / education@masshist.org.

By examining towns of Plymouth County, particularly Pembroke and Middleboro, this project shows how political, economic, and at times military power flowed from effective control of the waterways. The shift in what might be called “water regimes” was a crucial location of what Charles Sellers has called the Market Revolution.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

Rescheduled from October 30. This seminar paper will focus on the ideological elements in the conflict that emerged over wage and price regulation, as wartime debates created a conceptual gap between calls for economic equality and liberty. It is part of a larger study of the evolution of notions of equality in America.

MHS Fellows and Members are invited to a special preview reception of "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land." The evening will begin with remarks by Stephen T. Riley Librarian Peter Drummey.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, Boston became a center of the national antislavery movement, and in 1831 William Lloyd Garrison, "all on fire" for the cause, began publication of The Liberator, the country's leading abolitionist newspaper. There was strong resistance to the radical movement, however, not only in the slaveholding South, but among Northerners' as well. The exhibition features manuscripts, photographs, artifacts—including the imposing stone for The Liberator—and portraits related to the abolitionist movement in Boston.

Librarian Peter Drummey will discuss materials in the new exhibition that illustrate the life and career of William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the Liberator, and a central figure in the antislavery movement in Boston.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

This essay will explore Broadway as the central location for many of Jaffe’s case studies of cultural entrepreneurs as well as the subject and site of new ways of seeing in the city. His research includes Currier & Ives lithographs, John Rogers sculptures, E. & H. T. Anthony Stereographs, and Harper's illustrations.