NORWICH

The sound of freedom rang outside City Hall here late Saturday afternoon, with the inaugural ringing of a unique memorial to American history's most famous proclamation.

The bright, shining, 250-pound Norwich Freedom Bell, cast and polished on Friday and Saturday, commemorates the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The executive order, which President Abraham Lincoln made public five days after the North's Civil War victory at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, freed all slaves within the rebellious Confederate states, effective with his signature on Jan. 1, 1863.

The bell pealed for the first time at 6 p.m., the clapper sounded by Jacqueline Owens, president of the Norwich branch of trhe NAACP. A succession of dignitaries and onlookers took turns pulling the cord.

"Let freedom ring!" someone in the audience yelled.

The bell was paraded to City Hall from the harbor park, where its casting began with a Friday morning ceremony. With the Freedom Schooner Amistad docked nearby, and an Abraham Lincoln re-enactor helping out, local elementary school students spent their last day of school passing palm-sized ingots to the crew of a mobile foundry, where the bits of bronze were melted down at 2,130 degrees.

Norwich, home of Connecticut Civil War Gov. William Alfred Buckingham, first celebrated the proclamation on Jan. 2, 1863, with an hour-long, city-wide ringing of church bells and a 100-gun salute. Republican Mayor James Lloyd Greene famously paid for the gunpowder himself after five residents went to court to protest the $98 expense.

Officials hope that the casting of the new bell which highlighted a three-day, multi-cultural ceremony culminating on Juneteenth, the celebration of the abolition of slavery not only recognizes the Rose City's role in the abolition movement and the Civil War, but spurs public interest in its long history, boosting its stock as a destination for historic and cultural tourism.

"Thank you for finding this unique way to celebrate this historic even in our nation's history,'' Gov. Dannel P. Malloysaid, speaking at a Friday luncheon that included city and state officials, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Gail Adams, a U.S. Department of the Interior official. Adams said the national tourism strategy of President Barack Obama's administration's envisions promoting "lesser-known jewels" such as Norwich.

The bell, brainchild of the local Emancipation Proclamation Commemoration Committee, was funded through $100,000 in state support and local donations. The Verdin Co. of Cincinnati, Ohio, a 170-year-old, family-owned manufacturer of bells, carillons and clocks, was commissioned to do the casting, using the customized traveling foundry it developed 11 years ago.

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Sound Of Freedom Rings In Norwich