Emancipation Proclamation celebration is held in Boston.

The freeing of most of the four million enslaved people in the U.S. is celebrated at events throughout the city. At the Music Hall, Ralph Waldo Emerson recites the Boston Hymn, composed for the occasion. On Boston Common, a 100-gun salute is released. At Tremont Temple, Frederick Douglass later writes, “I never saw Joy before. Men, women, young and old were up; hats and bonnets were in the air.” The next day, the Boston Daily Advertiser declares, “No instrument of more momentous import has ever been published since the Declaration of Independence challenged the attention of the world, and this proclamation affects the welfare of as large a number of human beings as did that.”