Lebanon — Two notable collections of American documents and photographs featured in the traveling exhibit “Freedom: A History of the U.S.” will be on display at the Boone County Historical Society from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 2 to 13 at the Cragun House. The house will be closed on weekends.
Visitors can view reproductions of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, manuscript letters from George Washington and Frederick Douglass, typed speeches from FDR and Martin Luther King Jr., and others.
Freedom documents and illustrates the importance of people and events that trace the evolving principle of freedom from the nation’s founding until 1968. The exhibit features personal letters, documents and broadsides from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, previously unavailable to the public, and invites visitors to read the words and see the images of men and woman who arrived in this land and forged the nation.
Among the highlights of the panel exhibits are a rare 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence, a secretly printed draft and official copy of the Constitution, Lincoln’s handwritten notes of speeches and letters by leading figures, such as Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and others.
The six Freedom exhibits toured 20 U.S. cities in 2003. The society was able to extend it by adding it to the Indiana Historical Society’s Traveling Exhibition Program.
