Seeing the Emancipation Proclamation

Today I trekked down to the National Archives to see the Emancipation Proclamation on display (as happens for five days a year). Several other Hamilton students were there as well.

The experience intrigued me because the public level of interest seemed dissonant with reality--after an hour of waiting in line, and up to twenty minutes more to enter the Rotunda where the Proclamation, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights were displayed, all the masses of public got for their time was a brief glimpse of a faded, almost illegible parchment. The facsimile documents next to the Proclamation were almost better viewing. The only thing any member of the public could say afterwards was that they had "seen it."

Yet I think this excitement speaks to an important aspect of American democracy--in a culture that values the rule of law, such a document has a great deal of prestige. Thus, people line up to see a document the same way they might once have gathered to see a member of royalty. I found it reassuring that so many people remain interested in a scrap of paper conveying rights; with this fundamental respect for law in America, efforts to abolish our freedoms are likely to remain unpopular and short-lived.