Emancipation
Four million people, freed in stages
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The Emancipation Proclamation was an order issued by Lincoln on 1 January 1863 under his authority as commander-in-chief in wartime. Slavery was finally abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865. The 19th of June 1865 — Juneteenth — is the date the news reached Texas, two and a half years after the proclamation, and is now a federal holiday. Emancipation was not simply granted from above: hundreds of thousands freed themselves by walking off plantations towards Union lines, and around 180,000 Black men served in the Union army.
For children
In the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln declared all enslaved people in the rebelling states free. The proclamation applied only where the Union had no power, so it freed nobody immediately — but it made the war a war about slavery, and the army an army of liberation.
Sources
- Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010)
- Emancipation Proclamation (1863), U.S. National Archives
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