Emancipation Proclamation – Wayne County Civil War Roundtable Program

Wayne County Civil War Roundtable Program, free and open to the public in the Wooster Branch of the Wayne County Public Libraries.

Feb. 21, 2017, 6:30 p.m. – continuing with quality programs! John C. Fazio – Emancipation Proclamation

This program covers the genesis, the preparation, the promulgation, the interpretations and the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation, perhaps the strangest document in American history. Discussed are the moral imperatives that inspired the war measure as well as the more concrete motives of preventing foreign intervention in the war and depleting Southern man-power-the engine that drove the Southern economy-and, the opposite side of the same coin, increasing Northern manpower, especially in Union armies. Also discussed are the Thirteenth Amendment and how the two documents were viewed by later generations of African-Americans.

Presenter John C. Fazio has a B.A. and J.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.  He now lives in Fairlawn (an Akron suburb) with his wife, Mary, who is retired after a career in public relations.  Between them, they have seven children, all of whom have left the nest.  John joined Mary in retirement in 2014 after practicing law for forty-nine years.  He is a student of history, with an emphasis on European and American history and with an even greater emphasis on the most defining event in American history, the Civil War.  He is a member of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable and has been its president.  He frequently speaks on the war and other subjects before Roundtables and other groups and has written and published numerous articles on the war and other subjects.  He is also a member of the Lincoln Forum, the Surratt Society, the Cleveland Grays and the Western Reserve Historical Society.  He recently completed writing Decapitating the Union: Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin and the Plot to Assassinate Lincoln, after almost five years of research and writing.  The book was published and released in 2015, the 150th anniversary year of the event, by McFarland & Company, Publishers, and is now available from Amazon and other on-line booksellers and in some bookstores. John will have copies of the book available at the presentation at a price that is $10 less than the publisher’s and Amazon’s price.

For information, contact Gerald Payn, Coordinator, Wayne County Civil War Roundtable  330-345-5547