Emancipation Proclamation
Issued by Abraham Lincoln in preliminary form after the Battle of Antietam and taking effect on 1 January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declared free all enslaved people in the territories still in rebellion against the United States. As a war measure grounded in the president's powers as commander-in-chief, it did not touch slavery in the loyal border states or in Union-occupied areas — and so freed no one directly where Federal authority actually reached — but it transformed the meaning of the war. It made the destruction of slavery an explicit Union aim, ensuring that every advance of Federal armies became an engine of emancipation; it deterred Britain and France from recognising a Confederacy now openly fighting to preserve slavery; and it authorised the enlistment of Black soldiers, nearly 200,000 of whom would serve. It pointed toward the permanent, constitutional abolition completed by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
- Year: 1863 CE
- Category: Political
