William Tolman Carlton, 1816-1888.

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No. 8480 William T. Carlton

Painter William Tolman Carlton was born in Boston in 1816 and moved to Dorchester in his adult life, dying there in 1888.Perhaps his most well-known painting hangs over Lincoln’s desk in the White House at Washington, DC. Watch Meeting–Dec. 31st, 1862–Waiting for the Hour depicts slaves waiting for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No. 12752 Carlton’s painting The Hour of Emancipation, sometimes called Waiting for the Hour

Text from American Heritage Magazine, Dec. 1981, v. 33 issue 1

The signing took place during the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, 1862. The Proclamation was to go into effect at midnight. As darkness fell that evening, clusters of eager blacks gathered together all across the country to see freedom in. This painting commemorates one of those midnight watches. Slaves have come together in a church somewhere behind the Union lines. Their elderly pastor leans on his pulpit -hammered together from packing crates that still bear the stenciled name of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. In his hand is a precious gold timepiece ticking away his bondage. It is five minutes to midnight.

This little-known painting, which captured one of the great moments in American history, also served as a curious link between two of the era’s greatest men: William Lloyd Garrison and Abraham Lincoln. The grim Yankee abolitionist and the laconic prairie President had little in common; they were united only in their opposition to slavery.

For more than thirty years, Garrison had demanded its immediate and unconditional end. For him, slavery was above all a sin; Americans had to repent; no compromise with it was possible. In 1831, in the very first issue of his newspaper, The Liberator, he promised to be “as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.” He never did.

American politics were wicked, a product of hateful compromise with the slave power, he said, and he had urged his supporters to “stand aloof” from the 1860 presidential contest. But with Lincoln’s election and the coming of the war, Garrison altered his position: armed struggle, he now believed, would quickly accomplish what three decades of moral suasion had failed to achieve. He told his friends to withhold criticism of Lincoln and to work behind the scenes to persuade him to use his war power to emancipate the slaves.

The two men finally met at the Republican convention in 1864, and Garrison came away convinced that Lincoln was committed “to uproot slavery and give fair play to the emancipated.” Later that summer, Garrison found a way to express his pleasure: he arranged to have the original Carlton painting shipped to the White House.

The painting was presented to Abraham Lincoln by public subscription on the occasion of a visit to Boston.

 

Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Volume VIII,1880-1889. (Boston: Published by the Society, 1907), 349-350.

William Tolman Carlton, of Boston, Massachusetts, a Resident Member from 1871, was born in Boston, January 30, 1816, and died in Dorchester, Massachusetts, June 28, 1888.  He was the son of William Leeds and Mary Jane (Millet) Carlton.  The name of Carlton was spelled Kelton by the earlier generations, and the change to Carlton was made by William L. Carlton, father of the subject of this sketch.

The greater part of his childhood was passed in his father’s residence at the corner of William Court and the present Court Square, where his father carried on a West India goods store in the lower front of the building.  Later the family removed to Dorchester, where he was educated in the common school and the Dorchester Academy.

Conditions of health frustrated an intention on is part to prepare for college, and he directed his attention to an artist’s career.  He spent several years in Europe, mostly in Italy, and journeyed in Germany and France for the examination of art galleries, and followed his career of an artist for part of a year, in Paris.  He returned to this country in 1840, and practiced portrait painting, and gave instruction in drawing to private classes.

Between the years 1847 and 1850 he was in Albany, New York, where his work was the painting of portraits, mostly.  He resumed his professional work in Boston, in 1850, and during the following year, was selected by Mr. George Hollingsworth, an artist of repute, as his assistant in carrying on the school for free instruction in art, which had then lately been opened by the Lowell Institute.  The school was closed after twenty-seven years because the method of instruction introduced in 1850 was generally adopted by teachers in schools of free instruction and in private schools.

He married, June 1, 1864, Mary Elizabeth Blanchard, of Portland, Maine.  This was her name by adoption, Raynes having been her ancestral name.

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December 26, 2021

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