WASHINGTON — In subdued lighting, visitors quietly filed past the glass case, some gazing in awe at the pages on display: the original Emancipation Proclamation.

“Looking at it, it does move me because, when you think about it, people were looking for a way to make it possible for common citizens to have rights,” says Paul Logan, a government contractor and retired Army major from Fairfax Station, Va.

America’s Civil War president, Abraham Lincoln, signed the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, freeing slaves in the rebellious states.

“That all persons held as slaves