Longwood Progressive Meeting delegation met with President Lincoln - 1862

ON SEPTEMBER 22, 1862 A PROCLAMATION WAS ISSUED BY PRES. LINCOLN .......... MEETING WITH LONGWOOD GROUP JUNE 1862
Thomas Garrett meeting with Pres. Abraham Lincoln
Longwood Meeting group may have influenced Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. In June 1862, when the country had been at war for a little over a year, Longwood Progressive Meeting of Friends sent six delegates to Washington to present what they called a Memorial--really a petition--to the president. The six were Thomas Garrett, Alice Eliza Hambleton, Dinah Mendenhall, Oliver Johnson, Eliza Agnew, and William Barnard. The Longwood Friends said they saw the evils of the war as "vials of Divine retribution which are now poured out upon the whole land, for its grievous and unrelenting oppression of a guiltless and inoffensive race." They urged Lincoln to abolish slavery without delay........ President Lincoln started drafting the Emancipation in July......