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{{Short description|Executive order by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln freeing slaves in the South}}
{{about|United States history|emancipation proclamations in other countries|Abolition of slavery timeline}}
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{{Use American English|date=January 2025}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2020}}
{{Infobox U.S. presidential document
| longtitle        = Proclamation 95—Regarding the Status of Slaves in States Engaged in Rebellion Against the United States
| name             = 
| othershorttitles = 
| shorttitle       = 
| depiction        = Hand colored Emancipation The Past and the Future by Thomas Nast.jpg
| depictioncaption = ''Emancipation: The Past and the Future'' ([[Thomas Nast]], 1863)
| depictionalt     =  
| documentimage    = Emancipation Proclamation WDL2714.jpg
| documentcaption  = The five-page original document, held in the [[National Archives Building]] – until 1936 it had been bound with other proclamations in a large volume held by the [[United States Department of State|Department of State]].<ref>{{cite web |date=28 January 2022 |title=The Emancipation Proclamation |url=https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation |website=[[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]] |access-date= 19 February 2017}}</ref>
| type             = Proclamation
| executiveorder   = 
| signedpresident  = 
| signeddate       = 
| documentnumber   = 
| publicationdate  = 
| documentcitation = 
| summary          = During the [[American Civil War]], [[Slavery in the United States|enslaved people]] in the [[Confederate States of America]] declared "free".
| repealedby       = 
| repealeddate     = 
}}
{{Slavery}}
{{Abraham Lincoln series}}

The '''Emancipation Proclamation''', officially '''Proclamation 95''',<ref>{{cite web |title=Proclamation 95—Regarding the Status of Slaves in States Engaged in Rebellion Against the United States [Emancipation Proclamation] {{pipe}} The American Presidency Project |url=https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-95-regarding-the-status-slaves-states-engaged-rebellion-against-the-united |website=presidency.ucsb.edu |access-date=April 23, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211218125054/https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-95-regarding-the-status-slaves-states-engaged-rebellion-against-the-united |archive-date=December 18, 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Harward |first1=Brian |title=The Presidency in Times of Crisis and Disaster: Primary Documents in Context |date=2020 |publisher=[[ABC-Clio]] |location=Santa Barbara, California |isbn=978-1-44-087088-0 |page=228 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EaW-DwAAQBAJ&dq=Proclamation+95%E2%80%94Regarding+the+Status+of+Slaves+in+States+Engaged+in+Rebellion+Against+the+United+States&pg=PA228 |access-date=April 23, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220423211358/https://books.google.com/books?id=EaW-DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA228&lpg=PA228&dq=Proclamation+95%E2%80%94Regarding+the+Status+of+Slaves+in+States+Engaged+in+Rebellion+Against+the+United+States&source=bl&ots=J-N4PHTztQ&sig=ACfU3U0vp68TFMC6MVB_mh6pp3mmTaffGQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxzryaiqv3AhWylIkEHXpHC7cQ6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&q=Proclamation%2095%E2%80%94Regarding%20the%20Status%20of%20Slaves%20in%20States%20Engaged%20in%20Rebellion%20Against%20the%20United%20States&f=false |archive-date=April 23, 2022 |url-status=live}}</ref> was a [[presidential proclamation]] and [[executive order]]<ref>{{cite book |first= Brian R. |last=Dirck |title= The Executive Branch of Federal Government: People, Process, and Politics |quote=The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order, itself a rather unusual thing in those days. Executive orders are simply presidential directives issued to agents of the executive department by its boss. |url= https://archive.org/details/executivebrancho0000dirc |url-access= registration |year=2007 |publisher= ABC-CLIO |page=[https://archive.org/details/executivebrancho0000dirc/page/102 102] |isbn= 978-1851097913 }}</ref> issued by United States president [[Abraham Lincoln]] on January 1, 1863, during the [[American Civil War]]. The Proclamation changed the legal status of more than 3.5 million [[Slavery in the United States|enslaved African Americans]] in the secessionist [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] states from enslaved to free. As soon as slaves escaped the control of their enslavers, either by fleeing to [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] lines or through the advance of federal troops, they were permanently free. In addition, the Proclamation allowed for former slaves to "be received into the armed service of the United States".<ref name="Transcript" /> The Emancipation Proclamation played a significant part in the [[end of slavery in the United States]].

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.<ref>{{cite web |date=18 June 2020 |title= Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation |url=https://www.nps.gov/anti/learn/historyculture/prelimemanproc.htm |website=[[Antietam National Battlefield]] |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=8 July 2025}}</ref> Its third paragraph begins:

{{quote|That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any [[U.S. state|State]], or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free;{{om|and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.}}}}

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Final Emancipation Proclamation.<ref name="Transcript">{{cite web |date=5 May 2017 |title=Transcript of the Proclamation |url=https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html |website=[[National Archives and Records Administration]] |access-date=28 February 2022}}</ref> It stated:

{{quote|Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do {{om|, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned,}} order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:}}

Lincoln then listed the ten states — of the eleven that had seceded — still in rebellion, Tennessee then being under Union control,<ref>{{cite web |date=5 February 2020 |title=Andrew Johnson and Emancipation in Tennessee |url=https://www.nps.gov/anjo/learn/historyculture/johnson-and-tn-emancipation.htm |website=[[Andrew Johnson National Historic Site]] |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=29 March 2022 |quote=On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in states still in rebellion against the United States. Tennessee, although a seceded state, did not fall under the provisions of the proclamation. Tennessee was under Union control, and Andrew Johnson was serving as Military Governor.}}</ref> and continued:

{{quote|And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free.... And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States.... And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.}}

The Proclamation applied to more than 3.5&nbsp;million of the 4&nbsp;million enslaved people in the country, though it excluded states not in rebellion, as well as parts of Virginia under Union control and Louisiana parishes thought to be pro-Union.<ref name="McCurry"/><ref name="Ruef"/><ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Davis |first=Kenneth C. |title=Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned |publisher=HarperCollins |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-06-008381-6 |location=New York |pages=227–228 |author-link=Kenneth C. Davis}}</ref> Around 25,000 to 75,000 were immediately emancipated in those regions of the Confederacy where the US Army was already in place. It could not be enforced in the areas still in rebellion,<ref name=":0" /> but, as the Union army took control of Confederate regions, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for the liberation of more than three and a half million enslaved people in those regions by the [[Conclusion of the American Civil War|end of the war]]. The Emancipation Proclamation outraged [[white Southerners]] and their sympathizers, who saw it as the beginning of a [[Ethnic conflict|race war]]. It energized [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionists]], and undermined those Europeans who wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.<ref>Allan Nevins, ''Ordeal of the Union, vol. 6: War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863'' (1960) pp. 231–241, 273</ref> The Proclamation lifted the spirits of [[African Americans]], both free and enslaved. It encouraged many to escape from slavery and flee toward Union lines, where many joined the [[Union Army]].<ref name="Howard Jones 1999">{{cite book|last=Jones|first=Howard|title=Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War |page=151|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gVvZb5oeVtwC|year=1999|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|isbn=0-8032-2582-2}}</ref> The Emancipation Proclamation became a historic document because it "would redefine the Civil War, turning it from a struggle to preserve the Union to one focused on ending slavery, and set a decisive course for how the nation would be reshaped after that historic conflict."<ref>{{cite web |title=Emancipation Proclamation |url=https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/emancipation-proclamation |website=[[History (American TV network)|History]] |access-date=January 24, 2021 |url-status=live |archive-date=January 21, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210121234009/https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/emancipation-proclamation|date=January 6, 2020}}</ref>

The Emancipation Proclamation was never challenged in court. To ensure the abolition of slavery in all of the U.S., Lincoln also mandated that [[Reconstruction Era|Reconstruction]] plans for Southern states require them to enact laws abolishing slavery (which occurred during the war in [[Tennessee in the American Civil War|Tennessee]], [[Arkansas in the American Civil War|Arkansas]], and [[Louisiana in the American Civil War|Louisiana]]); Lincoln encouraged border states to adopt abolition (which occurred during the war in [[Maryland in the American Civil War|Maryland]], [[Missouri in the American Civil War|Missouri]], and [[West Virginia in the Civil War|West Virginia]]) and pushed for passage of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|13th Amendment]]. The Senate passed the 13th Amendment by the necessary two-thirds vote on April 8, 1864; the House of Representatives did so on January 31, 1865; and the required three-fourths of the states ratified it on December 6, 1865. The amendment made [[slavery]] and [[involuntary servitude]] unconstitutional, "except as a [[Penal labour|punishment for crime]]{{om|whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.}}".<ref>{{cite web|title=13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865) |url=https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment |website=[[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]] |date=September 2021 |access-date=8 July 2025}}</ref>

==Authority==
{{Further|Slave states and free states|Slavery and the United States Constitution}}
[[File:Brooklyn Museum - Abraham Lincoln - overall.jpg|thumb|upright|Abraham Lincoln]]

The [[Slavery and the United States Constitution|United States Constitution]] of 1787 did not use the word [[Slavery and the United States Constitution|"slavery"]] but included several provisions about unfree persons. The [[Three-Fifths Compromise]] (in Article I, Section 2) allocated congressional representation, and therefore the number of each states' votes in the [[United States Electoral College|Electoral College]], based "on the whole Number of free Persons" and "three-fifths of all other Persons".<ref>{{cite book|editor=Allain, Jean|title=The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n_KAvAjkEbsC&pg=PA117|year=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=117|isbn=9780199660469}}</ref> Under the [[Fugitive Slave Clause]] (Article IV, Section 2), "No person held to Service or Labour in one State" would become legally free by escaping to another. [[Port Preference Clause|Article I, Section 9]] allowed Congress to pass legislation to outlaw the "Importation of Persons", but not until 1808.<ref name="Foner—2010——16">{{harvnb|Foner|2010|p=16}}</ref> However, for purposes of the [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifth Amendment]]—which states, "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"—slaves were understood to be property.<ref>{{cite book|editor=Allain, Jean|title=The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n_KAvAjkEbsC&pg=PA119|year=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=119–120|isbn=9780199660469}}</ref> Although abolitionists used the Fifth Amendment to argue against slavery, it was made part of the legal basis for treating slaves as property by ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'' (1857).<ref>Tsesis, ''The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History'' (2004), p. 14. "Nineteenth century apologists for the expansion of slavery developed a political philosophy that placed property at the pinnacle of personal interests and regarded its protection to be the government's chief purpose. The Fifth Amendment's Just Compensation Clause provided the proslavery camp with a bastion for fortifying the peculiar institution against congressional restrictions to its spread westward. Based on this property-rights-centered argument, Chief Justice [[Roger B. Taney]], in his infamous ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'' (1857) decision, found the Missouri Compromise unconstitutionally violated substantive due process".</ref> Slavery was also supported in law and in practice by a pervasive culture of [[white supremacy]].<ref>Tsesis, ''The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom'' (2004), pp. 18–23. "Constitutional protections of slavery coexisted with an entire culture of oppression. The peculiar institution reached many private aspects of human life, for both whites and blacks.... Even free Southern blacks lived in a world so legally constricted by racial domination that it offered only a deceptive shadow of freedom."</ref> Nonetheless, between 1777 and 1804, every Northern state provided for the immediate or gradual abolition of slavery. No Southern state did so, and the slave population of the South continued to grow, peaking at almost four million people at the beginning of the Civil War, when most slave states sought to break away from the United States.<ref name="Foner—2010-14-16">{{harvnb|Foner|2010|pp=14–16}}</ref>

Lincoln accepted the conventional interpretation of the Constitution before 1865 as not allowing the federal government in peacetime to end slavery in the states where it existed, as opposed to in U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.<ref name="Mackubin">{{cite web|url=http://www.nationalreview.com/books/owens200403251139.asp |title=The Liberator |first=Thomas Owens |last=Mackubin |date=March 25, 2004 |work=National Review |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120216125903/http://old.nationalreview.com/books/owens200403251139.asp |archive-date=February 16, 2012 |url-status=dead  }}</ref> During the Civil War, however, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation under his authority as "[[Powers of the President of the United States#Commander-in-Chief|Commander in Chief]] of the Army and Navy" under [[U.S. Const. Art. II, §2|Article II, section 2]] of the United States Constitution.<ref>Crowther, p. 651</ref> As such, in the Emancipation Proclamation he claimed to have the authority to free persons held as slaves in those states that were in rebellion "as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion". In the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln said "attention is hereby called" to two 1862 statutes, namely "An Act to Make an Additional Article of War" and the [[Confiscation Act of 1862]], but he didn't mention any statute in the Final Emancipation Proclamation and, in any event, the source of his authority to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and the Final Emancipation Proclamation was his "joint capacity as President and Commander-in-Chief".<ref>Fabrikant, Robert, "Emancipation and the Proclamation: Of Contrabands, Congress, and Lincoln". ''Howard Law Journal'', vol. 49, no. 2 (2006), p. 369.</ref> Lincoln therefore did not have such authority over the four border [[Slave and free states|slave-holding states]] that were not in rebellion—[[Missouri]], [[Kentucky]], [[Maryland]] and [[Delaware]]—so those states were not named in the Proclamation.{{refn|The fourth paragraph of the proclamation explains that Lincoln issued it "by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion".<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/transcript.html |title= The Emancipation Proclamation |date= January 1, 1863 |type= transcription |publisher= United States National Archives }}</ref>}} The fifth border jurisdiction, [[West Virginia]], where slavery remained legal but was being abolished, was, in January 1863, still part of the legally recognized [[Restored Government of Virginia|"reorganized" state of Virginia]], based in [[Alexandria, Virginia|Alexandria]], which was in the Union (as opposed to the Confederate state of Virginia, based in [[Richmond, Virginia|Richmond]]).

==Coverage==
[[File:Emancipation Proclamation.PNG|thumb|Areas covered by the Emancipation Proclamation are in red, slave-holding areas not covered are in blue]]
The Emancipation Proclamation applied only in the ten states that were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, namely South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina. The Proclamation did not cover the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slaveholding [[border states (American Civil War)|border states]] of [[Maryland]], [[Delaware]], [[Missouri]] and [[Kentucky]]. Also not named was the state of [[Tennessee]], in which a Union-controlled military government had already been set up, based in the capital, Nashville. Specific exemptions were stated for other areas under Union control on January 1, 1863, namely 48 counties that would soon become [[West Virginia]], seven other named counties of [[Virginia]] including Berkeley county, <!-- "to" here? --> which was soon added <!--omit "to" here? -->to West Virginia, [[New Orleans]] and 13 named parishes nearby.<ref>{{cite web |date=2015-10-06 |title=Transcript of the Proclamation |url=https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html |access-date=2020-09-20 |website=National Archives |language=en}}</ref> Exemptions were also made for certain areas that were deemed no longer in rebellion and areas Lincoln considered loyal to the Union.<ref name="McCurry"/><ref name="Ruef"/> Enslaved people in those areas would be freed by later state and federal actions.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2013-01-01 |title=150 years later, myths persist about the Emancipation Proclamation |url=https://www.cnn.com/2013/01/01/us/150-years-later-myths-persist-about-the-emancipation-proclamation/index.html |access-date=2022-07-22 |website=CNN |language=en}}</ref> The areas covered were, as the Proclamation stated, "[[Arkansas]], [[Texas]], [[Louisiana]] (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), [[Mississippi]], [[Alabama]], [[Florida]], [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], [[South Carolina]], [[North Carolina]], and [[Virginia]] (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth)."{{efn|The 48 counties then in the process of becoming West Virginia were Hancock, Brooke, Ohio, Marshall, Wetzel, Monongalia, Preston, Marion, Taylor, Tyler, Dodridge, Harrison, Barbour, Tucker, Pleasants, Wood, Ritchie, Lewis, Upshur, Randolph, Wirt, Calhoun, Gilmer, Braxton, Webster, Jackson, Roane, Clay, Nicholas, Mason, Putnam, Kanawha, Fayette, Cabell, Boone, Raleigh, Wayne, Logan, Wyoming, Pocahontas, Greenbrier, Monroe, Mercer, McDowell, Hampshire, Hardy, Highland, and Morgan. Frederick, Berkeley, and Jefferson counties had been invited to join as well. Berkley County was exempted, and Jefferson County was the only West Virginia county whose slaves the Proclamation freed. Frederick County remained a part of Virginia.}}<ref>{{Cite web |date=2022-08-20 |title=Emancipation in Jefferson County |url=https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=203915|access-date=2025-10-20 |website=Historical Marker Database |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last1=Irwin |first1=Richard Bache |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010407240 |title=Promulgating the Emancipation Proclamation. |last2=Banks |first2=Nathaniel Prentiss |date=1863-01-29 |series=General orders; no. 12 |author-link2=Nathaniel P. Banks |access-date=2023-07-26 |via=[[HathiTrust]]}} {{open access}}</ref>

Also, six additional counties and two independent cities{{efn|The two cities, Norfolk and Portsmouth were inside Norfolk county but independent of it.}} were exempted in the Union-controlled [[Tidewater (region)|Tidewater region]] of [[Virginia]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Freedmen and Southern Society Project|title=Freedom: a documentary history of emancipation 1861–1867 : selected from the holdings of the National Archives of the United States. The destruction of slavery|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TPg8AAAAIAAJ|year=1982|publisher=CUP Archive|isbn=978-0-521-22979-1|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=TPg8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA69 69]}}</ref> And, in [[Louisiana]], the city of [[New Orleans]]{{efn|New Orleans was both an independent municipality and the seat of government for the Orleans parish.}} and the 13 named parishes were exempted because Lincoln regarded them as loyal to the Union. These exemptions left unemancipated an additional 300,000 slaves.<ref name="McCurry">{{Cite book |last=McCurry |first=Stephanie |title=Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-0674064218 | location=Cambridge, Mass. |pages=254}}</ref><ref name="Ruef">{{Cite book |last=Ruef |first=Martin |title=Between Slavery and Capitalism: The Legacy of Emancipation in the American South |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2014 |isbn=9780691162775 | location=Princeton, N.J. |pages=44}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Foner|2010|pp=241–242}}</ref>{{efn|The Union controlled several regions of seceding states that were not exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, including additional counties in Virginia, Baton Rouge Louisiana, northern Arkansas, the northern edges of Mississippi and Alabama, northern coastal North Carolina, southern coastal South Carolina, and the Jacksonville region of Florida.}}

The Emancipation Proclamation resulted in the emancipation of a substantial percentage of the slaves in the Confederate states as the Union armies advanced through the South and slaves escaped to Union lines, or slave owners fled, leaving slaves behind. The Emancipation Proclamation also committed the Union to ending slavery in addition to preserving the Union.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation resulted in the gradual freeing of most slaves, it did not make slavery illegal. Of the states that were exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, Maryland,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/speccol/sc2600/sc2685/html/conv1864.html |title=Archives of Maryland Historical List: Constitutional Convention, 1864 |date=November 1, 1864 |access-date=November 3, 2011 |archive-date=February 20, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120220000817/http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/speccol/sc2600/sc2685/html/conv1864.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Missouri,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/event/missouri-abolishes-slavery |title=Missouri abolishes slavery |date=January 11, 1865 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120425132518/http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/event/missouri-abolishes-slavery |archive-date=April 25, 2012 }}</ref> Tennessee,<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1865/01/15/news/tennessee-state-convention-slavery-declared-forever-abolished-parson-brownlow.html |title=Tennessee State Convention: Slavery Declared Forever Abolished |newspaper=The New York Times |date=January 14, 1865}}</ref> and West Virginia<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wvculture.org/history/thisdayinwvhistory/february.html|title=On This Day in West Virginia History – February|website=www.wvculture.org}}</ref> prohibited slavery before the war ended. In 1863, President Lincoln proposed a moderate plan for the Reconstruction of the captured Confederate State of Louisiana.<ref>Stauffer (2008), ''Giants'', p. 279</ref> Only 10 percent of the state's electorate had to take the loyalty oath. The state was also required to accept the Emancipation Proclamation and abolish slavery in its new constitution. By December 1864, the Lincoln plan abolishing slavery had been enacted not only in Louisiana, but also in Arkansas and Tennessee.<ref name="Peterson 1995 pp. 38–41">Peterson (1995), ''Lincoln in American Memory'', pp. 38–41</ref><ref name="McCarthy 1901 p. 76">McCarthy (1901), ''Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction'', p. 76</ref> In Kentucky, Union Army commanders relied on the Proclamation's offer of freedom to slaves who enrolled in the Army and provided freedom for an enrollee's entire family; for this and other reasons, the number of slaves in the state fell by more than 70 percent during the war.<ref name=Harrison>{{Cite journal |last=Harrison |first=Lowell H.  |year=1983 |title=Slavery in Kentucky: A Civil War Casualty |journal=The Kentucky Review |edition=Fall |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=38–40}}</ref>  However, in Delaware<ref>{{cite web|url=http://slavenorth.com/delaware.htm|title=Slavery in Delaware|website=slavenorth.com}}</ref> and Kentucky,<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FdTIIEZ1k2QC&q=kentucky+abolishes+slavery&pg=PA174 |title=A New History of Kentucky |author=Lowell Hayes Harrison and James C. Klotter |year=1997 |page=180|publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=0813126215 }} In 1866, Kentucky refused to ratify the 13th Amendment, but it ratified it in 1976.</ref> slavery continued to be legal until December 18, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment took effect.

==Background==
===Military action prior to emancipation===
The [[Fugitive Slave Act of 1850]] required individuals to return runaway slaves to their owners. During the war, in May 1861, Union general [[Benjamin Butler (politician)|Benjamin Butler]] declared that three slaves who escaped to Union lines were [[contraband (American Civil War)|contraband of war]], and accordingly he refused to return them, saying to a man who sought their return, "I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be".<ref name="NYT_20110411">{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220101/https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html |archive-date=2022-01-01 |url-access=limited| date=April 1, 2011| title=How Slavery Really Ended in America| author=Adam Goodheart| work=[[The New York Times]]| access-date=April 3, 2011}}{{cbignore}}</ref> On May 30, after a cabinet meeting called by President Lincoln, "Simon Cameron, the secretary of war, telegraphed Butler to inform him that his contraband policy 'is approved.'"<ref>Oakes, James, ''Freedom National'', p. 99.</ref> This decision was controversial because it could have been taken to imply [[diplomatic recognition|recognition]] of the Confederacy as a separate, independent sovereign state under international law, a notion that Lincoln steadfastly denied. In addition, as contraband, these people were legally designated as "property" when they crossed Union lines and their ultimate status was uncertain.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://home.nps.gov/cwdw/learn/historyculture/living-contraband-former-slaves-in-the-capital-during-and-after-the-civil-war.htm | title=Living Contraband – Former Slaves in the Nation's Capital During the Civil War | work=Civil War Defenses of Washington | publisher=National Park Service | access-date=June 29, 2013}}</ref>

===Governmental action toward emancipation===
<imagemap>
Image:Emancipation proclamation.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|''[[First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln]]'' by [[Francis Bicknell Carpenter]] (1864) {{Clickable|use cursor to identify.}}|alt=A dark-haired, bearded, middle-aged man holding documents is seated among seven other men.]]

poly 269 892 254 775 193 738 130 723 44 613 19 480 49 453 75 434 58 376 113 344 133 362 143 423 212 531 307 657 357 675 409 876 [[Edwin M. Stanton|Edwin Stanton]]
poly 169 282 172 244 244 201 244 148 265 117 292 125 305 166 304 204 321 235 355 296 374 348 338 395 341 469 [[Salmon P. Chase|Salmon Chase]]
poly 569 893 535 708 427 613 357 562 377 456 393 404 468 351 451 317 473 259 520 256 544 283 530 339 526 374 559 401 594 431 639 494 715 542 692 551 693 579 672 546 623 552 596 617 698 629 680 852 [[Abraham Lincoln]]
poly 692 514 740 441 788 407 772 350 800 303 831 297 861 329 867 381 868 409 913 430 913 471 847 532 816 533 709 533 [[Gideon Welles]]
poly 703 783 752 769 825 627 907 620 929 569 905 538 886 563 833 563 873 502 930 450 1043 407 1043 389 1036 382 1042 363 1058 335 1052 333 1052 324 1081 318 1124 338 1133 374 1116 412 1132 466 1145 509 1117 588 1087 632 1083 706 [[William H. Seward|William Seward]]
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poly 1081 308 1102 255 1095 220 1093 181 1109 161 1145 160 1169 191 1153 227 1153 246 1199 268 1230 310 1239 377 1237 443 1220 486 1125 451 1118 412 1136 378 1124 342 [[Montgomery Blair]]
poly 1224 479 1298 416 1304 379 1295 329 1325 310 1360 324 1370 359 1371 385 1371 397 1413 425 1422 497 1440 563 1348 555 1232 517 [[Edward Bates]]
poly 625 555 595 620 699 625 730 550 [[Emancipation Proclamation]]
poly 120 80 120 300 3 300 3 80 [[Simon Cameron|Portrait of Simon Cameron]]
poly 752 196 961 189 948 8 735 10 [[Andrew Jackson|Portrait of Andrew Jackson]]
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In December 1861, Lincoln sent his first annual message to Congress (the [[State of the Union Address]], but then typically given in writing and not referred to as such). In it he praised the free labor system for respecting human rights over property rights; he endorsed legislation to address the status of contraband slaves and slaves in loyal states, possibly through buying their freedom with federal money; and he endorsed federal funding of voluntary colonization.<ref>[https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-3-1861-first-annual-message December 3, 1861: First Annual Message: Transcript]</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Striner|first=Richard|title=Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery|year=2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/fatherabrahamlin0000stri/page/147 147–148]|isbn=978-0-19-518306-1|url=https://archive.org/details/fatherabrahamlin0000stri/page/147}}</ref> In January 1862, [[Thaddeus Stevens]], the [[History of the United States Republican Party|Republican]] leader in the [[United States House of Representatives|House]], called for total war against the rebellion to include emancipation of slaves, arguing that emancipation, by forcing the loss of enslaved labor, would ruin the rebel economy. On March 13, 1862, Congress approved an [[Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves]], which prohibited "All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States" from returning fugitive slaves to their owners.<ref>[http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/artwar.htm "Law Enacting an Additional Article of War" (the official name of the statute).]</ref> Pursuant to a law signed by Lincoln, slavery was abolished in the [[Geography of Washington, D.C.|District of Columbia]] on April 16, 1862, and owners were compensated.<ref>{{cite web |last=Mann |first=Lina |title=The Complexities of Slavery in the Nation's Capital |url=https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-complexities-of-slavery-in-the-nations-capital |access-date=2020-09-20 |website=White House Historical |language=en}}</ref> Compensated owners included free black people who had purchased the freedom of family members.<ref>"When Congress passed the DC Emancipation Act in April 1862, giving compensation to 'loyal' owners, Coakley [Gabriel Coakley, a leader of the black Catholic community in Washington] successfully petitioned for his wife and children, since he had purchased their freedom in earlier years. He was one of only a handful of black Washingtonians to make a claim like this. The federal government paid him $1489.20 for eight slaves that he 'owned' (he had claimed their value at $3,300)." White, Jonathan W., ''A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House'', Rowman & Littlefield, 2022, p.&nbsp;106.</ref>  

On June 9, 1862, Congress passed a bill that [[Territorial Slavery Act of 1862|prohibited slavery]] in all current and future [[Organized incorporated territories of the United States#List of organized incorporated territories|United States territories]] (though not in the states), and, on June 19, President Lincoln  signed it into law. This act effectively repudiated the 1857 opinion of the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] in the ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford|Dred Scott]]'' case that Congress was powerless to regulate slavery in U.S. territories.<ref>Guminski, Arnold. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=5uFS7SOBHd8C&dq=%22June+19%2C+1862%22+slavery+Lincoln&pg=PA241 The Constitutional Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of the American People]'', page 241 (2009).
</ref><ref>
Richardson, Theresa and Johanningmeir, Erwin. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=K_7Tba0v3ogC&dq=%22June+19%2C+1862%22+slavery+Lincoln&pg=PA129 Race, ethnicity, and education]'', page 129 (IAP 2003).
</ref> It also rejected the notion of [[popular sovereignty]] that had been advanced by [[Stephen A. Douglas]] as a solution to the slavery controversy, while completing the effort first legislatively proposed by [[Thomas Jefferson]] in 1784 to confine slavery within the borders of existing states.<ref>Montgomery, David. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=A24AAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22June+19%2C+1862%22+slavery+Lincoln&pg=PA428 The Student's American History]'', p. 428 (Ginn & Co. 1897).
</ref><ref>
Keifer, Joseph. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=GBq0gjrfxRgC&dq=%22June+19%2C+1862%22+slavery+Lincoln&pg=PA109 Slavery and Four Years of War]'', p. 109 (Echo Library 2009).</ref>

On August 6, 1861, the [[Confiscation Act of 1861|First Confiscation Act]] freed the slaves who were employed "against the Government and lawful authority of the United States."<ref>[http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/conact1.htm First Confiscation Act]</ref> On July 17, 1862, the [[Confiscation Act of 1862|Second Confiscation Act]] freed the slaves "within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by forces of the United States."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/conact2.htm |title=The Second Confiscation Act, July 17, 1862 |publisher=History.umd.edu |access-date=May 29, 2011 |archive-date=August 6, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080806144911/http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/conact2.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> The Second Confiscation Act, unlike the First Confiscation Act, explicitly provided that all slaves covered by it would be permanently freed, stating in section 10 that "all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all slaves of such person found on [or] being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/conact2.htm|title=The Second Confiscation Act, July 17, 1862|website=www.freedmen.umd.edu}}</ref> However, Lincoln's position continued to be that, although Congress lacked the power to free the slaves in rebel-held states, he, as commander in chief, could do so if he deemed it a proper military measure.<ref>Donald, David. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=fuTY3mxs9awC&q=Second+Confiscation+Act Lincoln]'', p. 365 (Simon and Schuster, 1996)</ref> By this time, in the summer of 1862, Lincoln had drafted the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which he issued on September 22, 1862. It declared that, on January 1, 1863, he would free the slaves in states still in rebellion.<ref name=Dear/>

===Public opinion of emancipation===
[[File:Scourged back by McPherson & Oliver, 1863, retouched.jpg|thumb|upright|''[[Carte de visite]]'' image of [[Peter (enslaved man)|Peter]], taken in [[Baton Rouge, Louisiana|Baton Rouge]] spring 1863; widely distributed by abolitionists to expose the brutality of slavery]]

[[Abolitionism in the United States|Abolitionists]] had long been urging Lincoln to free all slaves. In the summer of 1862, Republican editor [[Horace Greeley]] of the highly influential ''[[New-York Tribune]]'' wrote a famous editorial entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" demanding a more aggressive attack on the Confederacy and faster emancipation of the slaves: "On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one ... intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel ... that the rebellion, if crushed tomorrow, would be renewed if slavery were left in full vigor and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union."<ref>{{cite book |first=Harold |last=Holzer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=05ggngEACAAJ |title=Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |date=2006 |pages=160–161 |edition=second |isbn=978-0-8093-2686-0}}</ref> Lincoln responded in his open [[q:Abraham Lincoln#Letter to Horace Greeley (1862)|letter to Horace Greeley]] of August 22, 1862:

{{Blockquote|If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time ''save'' slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time ''destroy'' slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle ''is'' to save the Union, and is ''not'' either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing ''any'' slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing ''all'' the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do ''not'' believe it would help to save the Union.... I have here stated my purpose according to my view of ''official'' duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed ''personal'' wish that all men everywhere could be free.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln |editor-first=Roy P. |editor-last=Basler |volume=V: 1861–1862 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4ysBXMyg8UC&pg=PA388 388]–[https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4ysBXMyg8UC&pg=PA389 389] |publisher=Rutgers University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4ysBXMyg8UC&pg=PA388 |location=New Brunswick |date=2008|orig-date=1st pub. 1953|isbn=9781434477071 }}</ref>}}

Lincoln scholar [[Harold Holzer]] wrote about Lincoln's letter: "Unknown to Greeley, Lincoln composed this after he had already drafted a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which he had determined to issue after the next Union military victory. Therefore, this letter, was in truth, an attempt to position the impending announcement in terms of saving the Union, not freeing slaves as a humanitarian gesture. It was one of Lincoln's most skillful public relations efforts, even if it has cast longstanding doubt on his sincerity as a liberator."<ref name=Dear>{{cite book |first=Harold |last=Holzer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=05ggngEACAAJ |title=Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |date=2006 |page=162 |edition=2nd |isbn=978-0-8093-2686-0}}</ref> Historian [[Richard Striner]] argues that "for years" Lincoln's letter has been misread as "Lincoln only wanted to save the Union."<ref name="Striner">{{cite book |last=Striner |first=Richard |title=Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery |year=2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/fatherabrahamlin0000stri/page/176 176] |isbn=978-0-19-518306-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/fatherabrahamlin0000stri/page/176}}</ref> However, within the context of Lincoln's entire career and pronouncements on slavery this interpretation is wrong, according to Striner. Rather, Lincoln was softening the strong Northern [[white supremacist]] opposition to his imminent emancipation by tying it to the cause of the Union. This opposition would fight for the Union but not to end slavery, so Lincoln gave them the means and motivation to do both, at the same time.<ref name="Striner"/> In effect, then, Lincoln may have already chosen the third option he mentioned to Greeley: "freeing some and leaving others alone"; that is, freeing slaves in the states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, but leaving enslaved those in the [[Border states (American Civil War)|border states]] and Union-occupied areas.

Nevertheless, in the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation itself, Lincoln said that he would recommend to Congress that it compensate states that "adopt, immediate, or gradual abolishment of slavery". In addition, during the hundred days between September 22, 1862, when he issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he issued the Final Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln took actions that suggest that he continued to consider the first option he mentioned to Greeley — saving the Union without freeing any slave — a possibility. Historian [[William W. Freehling]] wrote, "From mid-October to mid-November 1862, he sent personal envoys to Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas".<ref>Freehling, William W. (2001). ''The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War'', New York: Oxford University Press, p. 111.</ref><ref> Cohen, Henry, [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61e83d709f319913599d9eff/t/65654294056d981e17a815ec/1701135003723/2023+%2354+LF+Fall+Bulletin++%E2%80%93+WEB.pdf "Was Lincoln Disingenuous in His Greeley Letter?"], ''The Lincoln Forum Bulletin'', Issue 54, Fall 2023, pp. 8-9.</ref> Each of these envoys carried with him a letter from Lincoln stating that if the people of their state desired "to avoid the unsatisfactory" terms of the Final Emancipation Proclamation "and to have peace again upon the old terms" (''i.e.'', with slavery intact), they should rally "the largest number of the people possible" to vote in "elections of members to the Congress of the United States ... friendly to their object".<ref>[https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln5/1:1126.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext ''Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln'', Vol. 5, pp. 462-463, 470, 500.]</ref> Later, in his [[State of the Union|Annual Message to Congress]] of December 1, 1862, Lincoln proposed an amendment to the [[Constitution of the United States|U.S. Constitution]] providing that any state that abolished slavery before January 1, 1900, would receive compensation from the United States in the form of interest-bearing U.S. bonds. Adoption of this amendment, in theory, could have ended the war without ever permanently ending slavery, because the amendment provided, "Any State having received bonds ... and afterwards reintroducing or tolerating slavery therein, shall refund to the United States the bonds so received, or the value thereof, and all interest paid thereon".<ref>[https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln5/1:1126.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext ''Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln'', Vol. 5, p. 530.]</ref>

In his 2014 book, ''[[Lincoln's Gamble]]'', journalist and historian [[Todd Brewster]] asserted that Lincoln's desire to reassert the saving of the Union as his sole war goal was, in fact, crucial to his claim of legal authority for emancipation. Since slavery was protected by the Constitution, the only way that he could free the slaves was as a tactic of war—not for its own sake.<ref name="Brewster">{{cite book| last=Brewster| first=Todd| title=Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War|year=2014|publisher=Scribner|page=59|isbn=978-1451693867}}</ref> But that carried the risk that when the war ended, so would the justification for freeing the slaves. Late in 1862, Lincoln asked his Attorney General, [[Edward Bates]], for an opinion as to whether slaves freed through a war-related proclamation of emancipation could be re-enslaved once the war was over. Bates had to work through the language of the ''Dred Scott'' decision to arrive at an answer, but he finally concluded that they could indeed remain free. Still, a complete end to slavery would require a constitutional amendment.<ref>{{cite book |last=Brewster |first=Todd |title=Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War |year=2014 |publisher=Scribner |page=236 |isbn=978-1451693867}}</ref>

Conflicting advice as to whether to free the slaves was presented to Lincoln in public and private. [[Thomas Nast]], a cartoon artist during the Civil War and the late 1800s considered "Father of the American Cartoon", composed many works, including a two-sided spread that showed the transition from slavery into civilization after President Lincoln signed the Proclamation. Nast believed in equal opportunity and equality for all people, including enslaved Africans or free blacks. A mass rally in Chicago on September 7, 1862, demanded immediate and universal emancipation of slaves. A delegation headed by [[William W. Patton]] met the president at the [[White House]] on September 13. Lincoln had declared in peacetime that he had no constitutional authority to free the slaves. Even used as a war power, emancipation was a risky political act. Public opinion as a whole was against it.<ref>{{harvnb|Guelzo|2006|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=MOFHPTQYqzgC&pg=PA18 18]}}</ref> There would be strong opposition among [[Copperhead (politics)|Copperhead]] Democrats and an uncertain reaction from loyal border states. Delaware and Maryland already had a high percentage of free blacks: 91.2% and 49.7%, respectively, in 1860.<ref>{{cite book |first=Peter |last=Kolchin |title=American Slavery: 1619–1877 |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |date=1994 |page=82 |isbn=978-0-8090-1554-2}}</ref>

==Drafting and issuance of the Proclamation==
{{Wikisource|The Emancipation Proclamation}}
[[File:Eastman Johnson - A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|[[Eastman Johnson]] (American, 1824–1906) – ''[[A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves]]'', {{Circa|1862}}]]
Lincoln first discussed the Proclamation with his cabinet in July 1862. He drafted his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and read it to Secretary of State [[William Seward]] and Secretary of the Navy [[Gideon Welles]], on July 13. Seward and Welles were at first speechless, then Seward referred to possible anarchy throughout the South and resulting foreign intervention; Welles apparently said nothing. On July 22, Lincoln presented it to his entire cabinet as something he had determined to do and he asked their opinion on wording.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/almintr.html | title=Emancipation Proclamation | work=Lincoln Papers | publisher=Library of Congress and Knox College | year=2002 | access-date=June 28, 2013}}</ref> Although Secretary of War Edwin Stanton supported it, Seward advised Lincoln to issue the Proclamation after a major Union victory, or else it would appear as if the Union was giving "its last shriek of retreat".<ref>{{cite book|last=Goodwin|first=Doris Kearns|author-link=Doris Kearns Goodwin|title=Team of Rivals|title-link=Team of Rivals|year=2005|publisher=Blithedale Productions|location=New York}}</ref> Walter Stahr, however, writes, "There are contemporary sources, however, that suggest others were involved in the decision to delay", and Stahr quotes them.<ref>Stahr, Walter, ''Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary'', New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017, p. 226.</ref>

In September 1862, the [[Battle of Antietam]] gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In the battle, though the Union suffered heavier losses than the Confederates and [[General McClellan]] allowed the escape of [[Robert E. Lee]]'s retreating troops, Union forces turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland, eliminating more than a quarter of Lee's army in the process. This marked a turning point in the Civil War.

[[File:Emancipation Proclamation - LOC 04067 - restoration1.jpg|thumb|upright|1864 reproduction of the Emancipation Proclamation from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division|left]]

On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam, Lincoln called his cabinet into session and issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals_iv/sections/preliminary_emancipation_proclamation.html#|title=Preliminary Emacipation Proclamation, 1862|website=www.archives.gov}}</ref> According to Civil War historian [[James M. McPherson]], Lincoln told cabinet members, "I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves."<ref>McPherson, James M. ''Battle Cry of Freedom'', (1988), p. 557.</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FTsl3N7hDpAC&q=six+months+at+the+white+house+carpenter |first=Frank B. |last=Carpenter |author-link=Francis Bicknell Carpenter |title=Six Months at the White House |year=2008|orig-year=1st pub. 1866 |page=90 |publisher=Applewood Books |access-date=February 20, 2010 |isbn=978-1-4290-1527-1}} as reported by Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Portland Chase, September 22, 1862. Others present used the word ''resolution'' instead of ''vow to God''.<br />
[[Gideon Welles]], ''Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson'' (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911), 1:143, reported that Lincoln made a covenant with God that if God would change the tide of the war, Lincoln would change his policy toward slavery. See also Nicolas Parrillo, "Lincoln's Calvinist Transformation: Emancipation and War", ''Civil War History'' (September 1, 2000).</ref> Lincoln had first shown an early draft of the proclamation to Vice President [[Hannibal Hamlin]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bangorinfo.com/Focus/focus_hannibal_hamlin.html |title=Bangor in Focus: Hannibal Hamlin |publisher=Bangorinfo.com |date= n.d.|access-date=May 29, 2011}}</ref> an ardent abolitionist, who was more often kept in the dark on presidential decisions. Lincoln issued the Final Emancipation Proclamation, as he had promised in the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, on January 1, 1863. Although implicitly granted authority by Congress, Lincoln used his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy to issue the Proclamation "as a necessary war measure." Therefore, it was not the equivalent of a statute enacted by Congress or a constitutional amendment, because Lincoln or a subsequent president could revoke it. One week after issuing the final Proclamation, Lincoln wrote to Major General [[John McClernand]]: "After the commencement of hostilities I struggled nearly a year and a half to get along without touching the 'institution'; and when finally I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred days fair notice of my purpose, to all the States and people, within which time they could have turned it wholly aside, by simply again becoming good citizens of the United States. They chose to disregard it, and I made the peremptory proclamation on what appeared to me to be a military necessity. And being made, it must stand". Lincoln continued, however, that the states included in the Proclamation could "adopt systems of apprenticeship for the colored people, conforming substantially to the most approved plans of gradual emancipation; and ... they may be nearly as well off, in this respect, as if the present trouble had not occurred". He concluded by asking McClernand not to "make this letter public".<ref> [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln6/1:84.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext;q1=broken+eggs "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln]" edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume 6, pp. 48–49.</ref><ref>Cohen, Henry, [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61e83d709f319913599d9eff/t/65654294056d981e17a815ec/1701135003723/2023+%2354+LF+Fall+Bulletin++%E2%80%93+WEB.pdf "Was Lincoln Disingenuous in His Greeley Letter?"], ''The Lincoln Forum Bulletin'', Issue 54, Fall 2023, p. 9.</ref>
[[File:Men of Color Civil War Recruitment Broadside 1863.png|thumb|upright|A [[Broadside (printing)|printed broadside]] recruiting men of color to enlist in the U.S. military after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 ([[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]).]]
Initially, the Emancipation Proclamation effectively freed only a small percentage of the slaves, namely those who were behind Union lines in areas not exempted. Most slaves were still behind Confederate lines or in exempted Union-occupied areas. Secretary of State [[William H. Seward]] commented, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." Had any slave state ended its secession attempt before January 1, 1863, it could have kept slavery, at least temporarily. The Proclamation freed the slaves only in areas of the South that were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. But as the Union army advanced into the South, slaves fled to behind its lines, and "[s]hortly after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, the Lincoln administration lifted the ban on enticing slaves into Union lines."<ref>[[James Oakes (historian)|Oakes, James]], ''Freedom National'', p. 367.</ref> These events contributed to the destruction of slavery.

The Emancipation Proclamation also allowed for the enrollment of freed slaves into the United States military. During the war nearly 200,000 black men, most of them ex-slaves, joined the Union Army.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war/ |title=Teaching With Documents: The Fight for Equal Rights: Black Soldiers in the Civil War|work=[[National Archives and Records Administration|U.S. National Archives and Records Administration]]|date=August 15, 2016}}</ref> Their contributions were significant in winning the war. The Confederacy did not allow slaves in their army as soldiers until the last month before its defeat.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/csenlist.htm|title=Confederate Law Authorizing the Enlistment of Black Soldiers, as Promulgated in a Military Order|date=March 23, 1865|work=CSA General Orders, No. 14|publisher=Department of History, University of Maryland|access-date=April 13, 2012|archive-date=March 12, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120312213532/http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/csenlist.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Though the counties of Virginia that were soon to form [[West Virginia]] were specifically exempted from the Proclamation (Jefferson County being the only exception), a condition of the state's [[admittance to the Union]] was that its constitution provide for the gradual abolition of slavery (an immediate emancipation of all slaves was also adopted there in early 1865). Slaves in the border states of [[Maryland]] and [[Missouri]] were also emancipated by separate state action before the Civil War ended. In Maryland, a new state constitution abolishing slavery in the state went into effect on November 1, 1864. The Union-occupied counties of eastern Virginia and the allegedly pro-Union parishes of Louisiana, which had been exempted from the Proclamation, both adopted state constitutions that abolished slavery in April 1864.<ref name="McCurry"/><ref name="Ruef"/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Convention_of_1864|title=Constitutional Convention, Virginia (1864)|website=encyclopediavirginia.org|access-date=October 11, 2016|archive-date=October 10, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161010165756/http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Convention_of_1864|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/april-1864-civil-war.htm|title=American Civil War April 1864 – History Learning Site|newspaper=History Learning Site|access-date=October 11, 2016}}</ref> In early 1865, Tennessee adopted an amendment to its constitution prohibiting slavery.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/chronol.htm |title=Freedmen and Southern Society Project: Chronology of Emancipation |publisher=History.umd.edu |date=December 8, 2009 |access-date=May 29, 2011 |archive-date=October 11, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011224131/http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/chronol.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.state.tn.us/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/timelines/timeline_1861-1865.htm |title=TSLA: This Honorable Body: African American Legislators in 19th Century Tennessee |publisher=State.tn.us |date= n.d.|access-date=May 29, 2011}}</ref>

==Implementation==
{{further|Slave states and free states}}

[[File:Am Arch Sculpt 4.jpg|thumb|right|The moment the Proclamation was signed, portrayed by [[Lee Lawrie]] in [[Lincoln, Nebraska]]]]

Union-occupied areas of the Confederate states where the Proclamation was put into immediate effect by local commanders included [[Winchester, Virginia]],<ref>Richard Duncan, Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2007), pp. 139–40</ref> [[Corinth, Mississippi]],<ref>Ira Berlin et al., eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861–1867, Vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 260</ref> the [[Sea Islands]] along the coasts of [[the Carolinas]] and Georgia,<ref name=Klingaman>William Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861–1865 (NY: Viking Press, 2001), p. 234</ref> [[Key West]], Florida,<ref>"Important From Key West", ''The New York Times'' February 4, 1863, p. 1</ref> and [[Port Royal, South Carolina]].<ref name="New York Times January 9, 1863, p. 2">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1863/01/09/news/interesting-port-royal-jubliee-among-negroes-first-president-s-emancipation.html?scp=35&sq=&st=p?pagewanted=1 |title=Interesting from Port Royal |newspaper=The New York Times |date=January 9, 1863 |page=2 }}</ref>

===Immediate impact===
[[File:SlaveChildrenUnknown.jpg|thumb|left|A photograph of two children who likely, were recently emancipated – circa 1870]]
[[File:Scene Along the Route.jpg|thumb|upright|"Scene Along the Route" from a ''[[The Philadelphia Inquirer|Philadelphia Inquirer]]'' correspondent (possibly [[U.H. Painter]]<ref>{{Cite news |date=1889-12-08 |title=Samuel Wilkeson Jr. |pages=1 |work=Buffalo Courier Express |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/buffalo-courier-express-samuel-wilkeson/127618446/ |access-date=2023-09-17}}</ref>) embedded with the [[Army of the Potomac]], ''The Indiana Progress'', June 1, 1864]]
On New Year's Eve in 1862, African Americans – enslaved and free – gathered across the United States to hold Watch Night ceremonies for "Freedom's Eve", looking toward the stroke of midnight and the promised fulfillment of the Proclamation.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-06-19 |title=The Historical Legacy of Juneteenth |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/historical-legacy-juneteenth |access-date=2022-06-13 |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |language=en}}</ref>   It has been inaccurately claimed that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave;<ref>{{cite book|author=James M. Paradis|title=African Americans and the Gettysburg Campaign|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pd3HsBXCq94C&pg=PA90|year=2012|publisher=Scarecrow Press|page=90|isbn=9780810883369}}</ref> historian [[Lerone Bennett Jr.]] alleged that the Proclamation was a hoax deliberately designed not to free any slaves.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Kenneth L. Deutsch|author2=Joseph Fornieri|title=Lincoln's American Dream: Clashing Political Perspectives|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C-YAbM7YYCIC&pg=PT35|year=2005|publisher=Potomac Books|page=35|isbn=9781597973908}}</ref> However, as a result of the Proclamation, most slaves became free during the war, beginning on the day it took effect; eyewitness accounts at places such as [[Hilton Head Island, South Carolina]],<ref>"News from South Carolina: Negro Jubilee at Hilton Head", ''New York Herald'', January 7, 1863, p. 5</ref> and [[Port Royal, South Carolina]]<ref name="New York Times January 9, 1863, p. 2"/> record celebrations on January 1 as thousands of blacks were informed of their new legal status of freedom. "Estimates of the number of slaves freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation are uncertain. One contemporary estimate put the 'contraband' population of Union-occupied North Carolina at 10,000, and the Sea Islands of South Carolina also had a substantial population. Those 20,000 slaves were freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation."<ref name=SIFBEP>Poulter, Keith, "Slaves Immediately Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation", ''North & South'', vol. 5, no. 1 (December 2001), p. 48.</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=qUTrAwAAQBAJ&dq=Those+20,000+slaves+were+freed+immediately+by+the+Emancipation+Proclamation.&pg=PA109 Epps, Henry, ''A Concise Chronicle History of African-American People Experience in America'', SCL, 2012, p. 109]</ref> This Union-occupied zone where freedom began at once included parts of [[eastern North Carolina]], the [[Mississippi River|Mississippi Valley]], [[North Alabama|northern Alabama]], the [[Shenandoah Valley]] of Virginia, a large part of [[Arkansas]], and the [[Sea Islands]] of Georgia and South Carolina.<ref>Harris, "After the Emancipation Proclamation", p. 45</ref> Although some counties of Union-occupied Virginia were exempted from the Proclamation, the lower [[Shenandoah Valley]] and the area around [[Alexandria, Virginia|Alexandria]] were covered.<ref name=SIFBEP /> 

Emancipation was immediately enforced as Union soldiers advanced into the Confederacy. Slaves fled their masters and were often assisted by Union soldiers.<ref>{{cite book|author=Allen C. Guelzo|title=Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MOFHPTQYqzgC&pg=PT107|year=2006|publisher=Simon & Schuster|pages=107–8|isbn=9781416547952}}</ref> But [[Robert Gould Shaw]] was skeptical and, on September 25, 1862, wrote to his mother, "So the 'Proclamation of Emancipation' has come at last, or rather, its forerunner. I suppose you all are very much excited about it. For my part, I can't see what ''practical'' good it can do now. Wherever our army has been, there remain no slaves, and the Proclamation will not free them where we don't go." Ten days later, he wrote her again, "Don't imagine, from what I said in my last that I thought Mr. Lincoln's 'Emancipation Proclamation' not right ... but still, as a ''war-measure'', I don't see the immediate benefit of it, ... as the slaves are ''sure'' of being free at any rate, with or without an Emancipation Act."<ref>[[Gary W. Gallagher|Gallagher, Gary W.]], [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066083&content=reviews ''The Union War''], Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011, pp. 142-143.</ref>
{{clear}}
[[Booker T. Washington]], as a boy of 9 in Virginia, remembered the day in early 1865:<ref>{{cite book|author=Booker T. Washington|title=Up From Slavery: An Autobiography|url=https://archive.org/details/upfromslaveryan06washgoog|year=1907|publisher=Doubleday |pages=[https://archive.org/details/upfromslaveryan06washgoog/page/n55 19-21]}}</ref>
{{blockquote
|As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom.... [S]ome man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper—the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see.}}

[[File:A Visit from the Old Mistress.jpg|thumb|left|Winslow Homer 1876 – "A Visit from the Old Mistress" depicts a tense meeting between a group of newly freed slaves and their former slaveholder – [[Smithsonian Museum of American Art]]]]

Runaway slaves who had escaped to Union lines had previously been held by the Union Army as "contraband of war" under the [[Confiscation Acts]]. The [[Sea Islands]] off the coast of [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] had been occupied by the Union Navy earlier in the war. The whites had fled to the mainland while the blacks stayed. An early program of [[Reconstruction Era of the United States|Reconstruction]] was set up for the former slaves, including schools and training. Naval officers read the Proclamation and told them they were free.<ref name=Klingaman/>

Slaves had been part of the "engine of war" for the Confederacy. They produced and prepared food; sewed uniforms; repaired railways; worked on farms and in factories, shipping yards, and mines; built fortifications; and served as hospital workers and common laborers. News of the Proclamation spread rapidly by word of mouth, arousing hopes of freedom, creating general confusion, and encouraging thousands to escape to Union lines.<ref>{{cite book|last=Goodheart|first=Adam|title=1861: The Civil War Awakening|year=2011|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group|location=New York}}</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2020}} George Washington Albright, a teenage slave in [[Mississippi]], recalled that like many of his fellow slaves, his father escaped to join Union forces. According to Albright, plantation owners tried to keep news of the Proclamation from slaves, but they learned of it through the grapevine. The young slave became a "runner" for an informal group they called the ''4Ls'' ("Lincoln's Legal Loyal League") bringing news of the Proclamation to secret slave meetings at plantations throughout the region.<ref>Jenkins, Sally, and [[John Stauffer (professor)|Stauffer, John]]. ''The State of Jones''. New York: Anchor Books, 2010. {{ISBN|978-0-7679-2946-2}}, p. 42.</ref>

Confederate general [[Robert E. Lee]] saw the Emancipation Proclamation as a way for the Union to increase the number of soldiers it could place on the field, making it imperative for the Confederacy to increase its own numbers. Writing on the matter after the sack of [[Fredericksburg, Virginia|Fredericksburg]], Lee wrote, "In view of the vast increase of the forces of the enemy, of the savage and brutal policy he has proclaimed, which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death, if we would save the honor of our families from pollution [and] our social system from destruction, let every effort be made, every means be employed, to fill and maintain the ranks of our armies, until God in his mercy shall bless us with the establishment of our independence."<ref>[http://cwmemory.com/2011/11/18/robert-e-lee-on-robert-h-milroy-or-emancipation/ "Robert E. Lee on Robert H. Milroy or Emancipation," ''civil war memory: The Online Home of Kevin M. Levin'', November 18, 2011]</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian|author=Shelby Foote|volume=2|year=1963|publisher=Random House}}</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2020}}

The Emancipation Proclamation marked a significant turning point in the war as it made the goal of the North not only preserving the Union, but also freeing the slaves.<ref>{{cite web |title=Emancipation Proclamation (1863) |url=https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/emancipation-proclamation |website=National Archives|access-date=13 February 2024|date=May 10, 2022}}</ref> The Proclamation also rallied support from abolitionists and Europeans, while encouraging enslaved individuals to escape to the North. This weakened the South's labor force while bolstering the North's ranks.<ref>{{cite web |title=Immediate Effects of the Emancipation Proclamation |url=https://www.portal.hsp.org/unit-plan-items/unit-plan-34 |website=Historical Society of Pennsylvania |access-date=13 February 2024}}</ref>

===Political impact===
{{more citations needed section|date=September 2020}}
[[File:TRUMP.JPG|thumb|"Abe Lincoln's Last Card; Or, Rouge-et-Noir" (Red and Black), a cartoon by [[John Tenniel]] printed by ''Punch''{{Refn|''Punch'', Volume 43, October 18, 1862, p.&nbsp;161}} after the ''London Times'' wrote in October 1862 that Lincoln had played his "last card" in issuing the Proclamation.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.millikensbend.org/articles-docs/london-times/lt-01-003.html | title=London Times Editorial | date=October 6, 1862 | access-date=November 28, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=45&subjectID=3 | title=International Reaction}}</ref> Lincoln's hair is in points, suggesting horns. The cartoon was reprinted often in the [[Copperheads (politics)|Copperhead]] press.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.historygallery.com/prints/PunchLincoln/1862lastcard/1862lastcard.htm |title=Abe Lincoln's Last Card|date=October 18, 1862 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aQQXbIE--ggC&q=London%20Times%20freeing%20the%20slaves%20Lincoln's%20%22desperate%20last-trump%20card%22&pg=PA236-IA10 |title=Abraham Lincoln, a Press Portrait: His Life and Times from the Original Newspaper Documents of the Union, the Confederacy, and Europe |first=Herbert |last=Mitgang |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-8232-2062-5}}</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2020}}]]
<!--http://www.shipofstate.com/prints/PunchLincoln/1862lastcard/1862lastcard.htm has more detail about poem on same page in ''Punch'', but, as a commercial site, is probably not an appropriate ref-->

The Proclamation was immediately denounced by [[Copperheads (politics)|Copperhead Democrats]], who opposed the war and advocated restoring the union by allowing slavery. [[Horatio Seymour]], while running for governor of New York, cast the Emancipation Proclamation as a call for slaves to commit extreme acts of violence on all white Southerners, saying it was "a proposal for the butchery of women and children, for scenes of lust and rapine, and of arson and murder, which would invoke the interference of civilized Europe".<ref name="Weber">{{cite book |last=Weber |first=Jennifer L. |url=https://archive.org/details/copperheads00jenn |title=Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-19-530668-2 |location=New York City |page=64 |url-access=registration}}</ref> The Copperheads also saw the Proclamation as an unconstitutional abuse of presidential power. In the ''Republican Watchman'' in Greenpoint, Long Island, its editor Henry A. Reeves wrote, "In the name of freedom for Negroes, [the proclamation] imperils the liberty of white men; to test an utopian theory of equality of races which Nature, History and Experience alike condemn as monstrous, it overturns the Constitution and Civil Laws and sets up Military Usurpation in their stead."<ref name="Weber"/> By contrast, in a speech delivered in February 1863 at the [[Cooper Union]] and published in the [[New-York Tribune]], [[Frederick Douglass]] called the Proclamation "the greatest event of our nation's history, if not the greatest event of the century".<ref>Morel, Lucas E. and Jonathan W. White (2025). ''Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln''. St. Louis, Missouri: Reedy Press, p. 84.</ref> 

Racism remained pervasive on both sides of the conflict and many in the North supported the war only as an effort to force the South to stay in the Union. The promises of many Republican politicians that the war was to restore the Union and not about black rights or ending slavery were declared lies by their opponents, who cited the Emancipation Proclamation. In Columbiana, Ohio, Copperhead David Allen told a crowd, "Now fellow Democrats I ask you if you are going to be forced into a war against your Britheren<!--quote in cited source uses 'i', not 'e'--> of the Southern States for the Negro. I answer No!"<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Weber |first=Jennifer L. |url=https://archive.org/details/copperheads00jenn |title=Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-19-530668-2 |location=New York City |page=65 |url-access=registration}}</ref> The Copperheads saw the Proclamation as proof of their position and the beginning of a political rise for their members; in Connecticut, H. B. Whiting wrote that the truth was now plain even to "those stupid thickheaded persons who persisted in thinking that the President was a conservative man and that the war was for the restoration of the Union under the Constitution."<ref name=":2" />

[[War Democrats]], who rejected the Copperhead position within their party, found themselves in a quandary. While throughout the war they had continued to espouse the racist positions of their party and their disdain of the concerns of slaves, they did see the Proclamation as a viable military tool against the South and worried that opposing it might demoralize troops in the Union army. The question would continue to trouble them and eventually lead to a split within their party as the war progressed.<ref name=":2" />

Lincoln further alienated many in the Union two days after issuing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation by [[Habeas corpus in the United States#Presidential suspension of habeas corpus|suspending habeas corpus]]. His opponents linked these two actions in their claims that he was becoming a despot. In light of this and a lack of military success for the Union armies, many War Democrat voters who had previously supported Lincoln turned against him and joined the Copperheads in the off-year elections held in October and November.<ref name=":2" />

In the [[United States House of Representatives elections, 1862|1862 elections]], the Democrats gained 28 seats in the House as well as the governorship of New York. Lincoln's friend Orville Hickman Browning told the president that the Proclamation and the suspension of habeas corpus had been "disastrous" for his party by handing the Democrats so many weapons. Lincoln made no response. Copperhead William Jarvis of Connecticut pronounced the election the "beginning of the end of the utter downfall of [[Abolitionism in the United States|Abolitionism]]".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Weber |first=Jennifer L. |url=https://archive.org/details/copperheads00jenn |title=Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-19-530668-2 |location=New York City |page=69 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Historians James M. McPherson and Allan Nevins state that though the results looked very troubling, they could be seen favorably by Lincoln; his opponents did well only in their historic strongholds and "at the national level their gains in the House were the smallest of any minority party's in an off-year election in nearly a generation. Michigan, California, and Iowa all went Republican.... Moreover, the Republicans picked up five seats in the Senate."<ref name=":1" /> McPherson states, "If the election was in any sense a referendum on emancipation and on Lincoln's conduct of the war, a majority of Northern voters endorsed these policies."<ref name=":1" />

====Confederate response====
[[File:Negroes Leaving Home - April 9 1864 issue Harper's Weekly - uncropped, Internet Archive copy.jpg|thumb|"NEGROES LEAVING THEIR HOME: The view on page 237 illustrates a phase of the war which the rebels have found it difficult to contemplate with any complacency. The exodus of the slaves from the bondage which has so long oppressed them has been steady and continuous from the moment the first blow was struck against the national honor, and it still goes on, hundreds and thousands of the poor, outraged creatures cowing weekly into tho Union lines at all points in the field. Our sketch gives an admirable view of the desolation which surrounds the homes of the negroes, and the heartiness and energy with which they make their way to freedom upon the slightest opportunity. The Federal gun-boat, it will be seen, lies far out at sea, but the sharp eyes of the waiting, watching bondmen have caught sight of the flag she carries; they know there is shelter under it for them, and launching their little boat, they carefully put the aged and infirm, with their few more valuable effects, aboard, and, with a pang, it may be, at leaving their rude home, but with hope and joy in their hearts at the prospect of deliverance, pull away from the shore, which henceforth is to be to them only a dark dreary line marking a yet darker past. There is pathos as well as history in the picture." (''Harper's Weekly'', April 9, 1864)]]
The initial Confederate response was outrage. The Proclamation was seen as vindication of the rebellion and proof that Lincoln would have abolished slavery even if the states had remained in the Union.<ref>{{cite web|title=The Rebel Message: What Jefferson Davis Has to Say|url=http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/HistArchive/?p_product=EANX-K12&p_theme=ahnp_k12&p_nbid=E59Q56PUMTMyNTY5MTAwNy4yOTAyNjM6MToxMzozOC4xMDUuOTYuMjM4&p_action=timelinedoc&p_docref=v2:11A050B7B120D3F8@EANX-11AE489CABB99E68@2401523-11AE489CB81982E0@0-11AE489D1F55ED48@The+Rebel+Message.+The+Document+in+Full.+What+Jeff.+Davis+Says+of+President+Lincoln%27s+Emancipation+Proclamation&d_doclabel=The+Rebel+Message%3A+What+Jefferson+Davis+Has+to+Say|work=New York Herald|publisher=America's Historical Newspapers|access-date=January 4, 2012}}</ref> It intensified the fear of slaves revolting and undermined morale, especially spurring fear among slave owners who saw it as a threat to their business.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Emancipation Proclamation: Striking a Mighty Blow to Slavery |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/emancipation-proclamation-striking-mighty-blow-slavery |website=[[National Museum of African American History and Culture]] – Smithsonian |publisher=[[Smithsonian]] |access-date=13 February 2024}}</ref> In an August 1863 letter to President Lincoln, U.S. Army general [[Ulysses S. Grant]] observed that the Proclamation's "arming the negro", together with "the emancipation of the negro, is the heavyest [''sic''] blow yet given the Confederacy. The South rave a greatdeel [''sic''] about it and profess to be very angry."<ref>{{cite web|quote=I have given the subject of arming the Negro my hearty support. This, with the emancipation of the Negro, is the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy. The South rave a greatdeel about it and profess to be very angry. |first=Ulysses |last=Grant |author-link=Ulysses S. Grant |url=http://www.civil-war-tribute.com/us-grant-letter-to-lincoln-08231863.htm |location=Cairo, Illinois |title=Letter to Abraham Lincoln |date=August 23, 1863 |access-date=May 3, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140503212700/http://www.civil-war-tribute.com/us-grant-letter-to-lincoln-08231863.htm |archive-date=May 3, 2014 }}</ref> In May 1863, a few months after the Proclamation took effect, the Confederacy passed a law demanding "full and ample retaliation" against the U.S. for such measures. The Confederacy stated that black U.S. soldiers captured while fighting against the Confederacy would be tried as slave insurrectionists in civil courts—a capital offense with an automatic sentence of death. Less than a year after the law's passage, the Confederates massacred black U.S. soldiers at [[Battle of Fort Pillow|Fort Pillow]].<ref>{{Cite book|first=Bruce|last=Tap|title=The Fort Pillow Massacre: North, South, and the Status of African Americans in the Civil War Era|publisher=Routledge|date=2013}}</ref>

Confederate President [[Jefferson Davis]] reacted to the Emancipation Proclamation with outrage and in an address to the Confederate Congress on January 12 threatened to send any U.S. military officer captured in Confederate territory covered by the Proclamation to state authorities to be charged with "exciting servile insurrection", which was a capital offense.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.awb.com/dailydose/?p=822 | title=January 12, 1863: Jefferson Davis responds to the Emancipation Proclamation &#124; the Daily Dose | access-date=January 13, 2023 | archive-date=January 13, 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230113000330/http://www.awb.com/dailydose/?p=822 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

Confederate General [[Robert E. Lee]] called the Proclamation a "savage and brutal policy he has proclaimed, which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death."<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20210514095239/https://leefamilyarchive.org/family-papers/letters/letters-1863/9-family-papers/1180-robert-e-lee-to-james-a-seddon-1863-january-10 Lee Family Digital Archive]</ref>

However, some Confederates welcomed the Proclamation, because they believed it would strengthen pro-slavery sentiment in the Confederacy and thus lead to greater enlistment of white men into the Confederate army. According to one Confederate cavalry sergeant from Kentucky, "The Proclamation is worth three hundred thousand soldiers to our Government at least.... It shows exactly what this war was brought about for and the intention of its damnable authors."<ref>{{Cite book|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/107 107]|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|oclc=34912692|access-date=March 8, 2016}}</ref> Even some Union soldiers concurred with this view and expressed reservations about the Proclamation, not on principle, but rather because they were afraid it would increase the Confederacy's determination to fight on and maintain slavery. One Union soldier from New York stated worryingly after the Proclamation's issuance, "I know enough of the southern spirit that I think they will fight for the institution of slavery even to extermination."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/108 108]|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|oclc=34912692|access-date=March 8, 2016}}</ref>

As a result of the Proclamation, the price of slaves in the Confederacy increased in the months after its issuance, with one Confederate from South Carolina opining in 1865 that "now is the time for Uncle to buy some negro women and children...."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/108 108]|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|access-date=March 8, 2016|oclc=34912692}}</ref>

===International impact===
As Lincoln had hoped, the Proclamation turned foreign popular opinion in favor of the Union by gaining the support of anti-slavery countries and countries that had already abolished slavery (especially the developed countries in Europe such as the [[United Kingdom]] and [[France]]). This shift ended the Confederacy's hopes of gaining official recognition.<ref>{{cite book|author=Robert E. May|title=The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic rim|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uIspT4gpgUAC|year=1995|publisher=Purdue University Press|isbn=978-1-55753-061-5|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=uIspT4gpgUAC&pg=PA29 29–68]|chapter=History and Mythology: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War}}</ref>

Since the Emancipation Proclamation made the eradication of slavery an explicit Union war goal, it linked support for the South to support for slavery. Public opinion in Britain would not tolerate support for slavery. As [[Henry Adams]] noted, "The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us than all our former victories and all our diplomacy." In Italy, [[Giuseppe Garibaldi]] hailed Lincoln as "the heir of the aspirations of [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]]". On August 6, 1863, Garibaldi wrote to Lincoln: "Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any crown could be, and greater than any merely mundane treasure".<ref>Mack Smith, p. 72</ref>

Mayor Abel Haywood, a representative for workers from [[Manchester]], England, wrote to Lincoln saying, "We joyfully honor you for many decisive steps toward practically exemplifying your belief in the words of your great founders: 'All men are created free and equal.'"<ref>Quoted in {{cite book|author=James Lander|title=Lincoln and Darwin: Shared Visions of Race, Science, and Religion|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QaTnoZ_uYlUC&pg=PA221|year=2010|publisher=Southern Illinois University Press|page=221|isbn=9780809329908}}</ref> The Emancipation Proclamation served to ease tensions with Europe over the North's conduct of the war, and combined with the recent failed Southern offensive at [[Battle of Antietam|Antietam]], to remove any practical chance for the Confederacy to receive foreign military intervention in the war.<ref>{{cite book|author=Kevin Phillips|title=The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-tsir90xfo4C&pg=PA493|year=2000|page=493|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=9780465013708}}{{Dead link|date=November 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

However, in spite of the Emancipation Proclamation, arms sales to the [[Blockade runners of the American Civil War|Confederacy through blockade running]], from British firms and dealers, continued, with knowledge of the British government.<ref>{{cite book|title=America the Great|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2BL2AwAAQBAJ&dq=blockade+running+Britain+1863+Emancipation+Proclamation&pg=PA1169|author=Edward Hawkins Sisson|date=June 22, 2014|page=1169|publisher=Edward Sisson}}</ref> The Confederacy was able to sustain the fight for two more years largely thanks to the weapons supplied by British [[blockade runner]]s. As a result, the blockade runners operating from Britain were responsible for killing 400,000 additional soldiers and civilians on both sides.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/historians-reveal-secrets-of-uk-gunrunning-which-lengthened-the-american-civil-war-by-two-years-9557937.html|title=Historians reveal secrets of UK gun-running which lengthened the American civil war by two years|author=David Keys|date=24 June 2014|work=[[The Independent]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=The Confederate Blockade Runners|url=https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1933/april/confederate-blockade-runners|author=Paul Hendren|date=April 1933|publisher=[[United States Naval Institute]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=American Civil War viewpoints: It was British arms that sustained the Confederacy|url=https://www.military-history.org/blog/it-was-british-arms-that-sustained-the-confederacy-during-the-american-civil-war-peter-tsouras.htm|author=[[Peter G. Tsouras]]|date=March 11, 2011|publisher=[[Military History Matters]]}}</ref><ref name="NJGT">{{cite thesis|url=https://prism.ucalgary.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/fce3cc3a-b506-4cf1-a42b-4f939db75ac5/content#page=14|title=Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: Confederate Informal Diplomacy and Privatized Violence in British America During the American Civil War|author=Beau Cleland|page=2|publisher=[[University of Calgary]]|quote=British resources were, in fact, essential to the rebellion’s survival. In the face of a blockade that after 1861 made direct imports nearly impossible, the overwhelming majority of the arms and supplies that the Confederacy received from abroad passed through British colonies en route from Europe, usually on British-flagged ships, consigned to British merchants, and paid for with cotton that followed the same path out of Southern ports. Without the advantage provided by British (and to a far lesser extent, Spanish) colonies, the Confederacy had no prayer of military victory. The colonies were unsinkable, unassailable refuges in an enemy-controlled sea.}}</ref>

==Gettysburg Address==
Lincoln's [[Gettysburg Address]] on November 19, 1863 made indirect reference to the Proclamation and the ending of slavery as a war goal with the phrase "new birth of freedom". The Proclamation solidified Lincoln's support among the rapidly growing abolitionist elements of the Republican Party and ensured that they would not block his renomination in 1864.<ref>Allan Nevins, ''Ordeal of the Union: vol. 6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863'' (1960).</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2020}}

==Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (1863)==
In December 1863, Lincoln issued his ''[[Ten percent plan|Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction]]'', which dealt with the ways the rebel states could reconcile with the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]]. Key provisions required that the states accept the Emancipation Proclamation and thus the freedom of their slaves, and accept the [[Confiscation Acts]], as well as the Act banning slavery in United States territories.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fa2_G9yaX38C&q=proclamation%2520of%2520amnesty%2520and%2520reconstruction&pg=PA479 |title=The A to Z of the Civil War and Reconstruction |last=Richter |first=William L. |publisher=Scarecrow Press |year=2009 |isbn=9780810863361 |pages=479–480 |language=en}}</ref>

==Postbellum==
[[File:SMITHSONIAN - Ambrotype of African American Woman with Flag - believed to be a washerwoman for Union troops quartered outside Richmond, Virginia.jpg|thumb|"[[Ambrotype]] of African American woman with flag," said to be a washerwoman for Union troops quartered outside Richmond, Virginia (Smithsonian 2005.0002.01)]]

Near the end of the war, abolitionists were concerned that the Emancipation Proclamation would be construed solely as a war measure, as Lincoln intended, and would no longer apply once fighting ended. They also were increasingly anxious to secure the freedom of all slaves, not just those freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Thus pressed, Lincoln staked a large part of his 1864 presidential campaign on a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery throughout the United States. Lincoln's campaign was bolstered by votes in both Maryland and Missouri to abolish slavery in those states. Maryland's new constitution abolishing slavery took effect on November 1, 1864.<ref>White, Jonathan W., "Achieving Emancipation in Maryland," in ''The Civil War in Maryland Reconsidered'', edited by Charles W. Mitchell and Jean H. Baker, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2021, p. 249.</ref> [[History of slavery in Missouri|Slavery in Missouri]] ended on January 11, 1865, when a state convention approved an ordinance abolishing slavery by a vote of 60-4,<ref>{{cite book|last1=Missouri|title=Journal of the Missouri state convention, held at the city of St. Louis January 6-April 10, 1865|date=1865|publisher=Missouri Democrat|location=St. Louis|pages=25–26|url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010471356|access-date=13 April 2022}}</ref> and later the same day, Governor [[Thomas C. Fletcher]] followed up with his own "Proclamation of Freedom."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Fletcher|first1=Thomas C.|title=Missouri's Jubilee|date=1865|publisher=W. A. Curry, Public Printer|location=Jefferson City, MO|url=https://archive.org/details/missourisjubilee00flet|access-date=13 April 2022}}</ref>

Winning re-election, Lincoln pressed the [[lame duck (politics)|lame duck]] [[38th United States Congress|38th Congress]] to pass the proposed amendment immediately rather than wait for the incoming [[39th United States Congress|39th Congress]] to convene. In January 1865, Congress sent to the state legislatures for ratification what became the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]], banning slavery in all U.S. states and territories, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was ratified by the legislatures of enough states by December 6, 1865, and proclaimed 12 days later. There were approximately 40,000 slaves in Kentucky and 1,000 in Delaware who were liberated then.<ref name=1860Census>{{cite web |url=http://www.sonofthesouth.net/slavery/slave-maps/slave-census.htm |title=Census, Son of the South |year=1860|publisher=sonofthesouth.net }}</ref>

==Critiques==
{{further|Abraham Lincoln and slavery}}

The Emancipation Proclamation has been ridiculed, notably by [[Richard Hofstadter]], who wrote that it "had all the moral grandeur of a [[bill of lading]]" and "declared free all slaves ... precisely where its effect could not reach".<ref>Hofstadter, Richard, "Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth," in ''[[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It]]'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948). [https://archive.org/details/americanpolitica00hofs online]. Vintage Books edition, March 1989, p. 169.</ref><ref> Similarly, [[Karl Marx]] said that the proclamation sounds like [https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1062&context=cwfac "ordinary summonses sent by one lawyer to another on the opposing side".] Quoted by [[Allen C. Guelzo]]. "'Sublime in Its Magnitude': The Emancipation Proclamation", in [[Harold Holzer|Holzer, Harold]] and Sara Vaughn Gabbard, eds., ''Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment''. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007, pp. 65-78, quotation at p. 66.</ref> Disagreeing with Hofstadter, [[William W. Freehling]] wrote that "in rebel-held areas, Lincoln presided over ... a conquering army, perfect to smooth the fugitives' road toward liberating themselves".<ref>Freehling, William W. (2001). ''The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War''. Oxford University Press, p. 118.</ref> Freehling added that Lincoln's asserting his power as Commander-in-Chief to issue the proclamation "reads not like an entrepreneur's bill for past services but like a warrior's brandishing of a new weapon".<ref>Freehling (2001), p. 118.</ref>

Lincoln's proclamation has been called "one of the most radical emancipations in the history of the modern world."<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Hahn |first=Steven |date=2011-01-13 |title=Discovering Equality |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/81377/lincoln-slavery-fiery-trial-review |magazine=The New Republic |issn=0028-6583}}</ref> Nonetheless, as over the years American society continued to be deeply unfair towards black people, cynicism towards Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation increased. One attack was [[Lerone Bennett, Jr.|Lerone Bennett's]] ''[[Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream]]'' (2000), which claimed that Lincoln was a white supremacist who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in lieu of the real racial reforms for which radical abolitionists pushed. To this, one scholarly review states, "Few Civil War scholars take Bennett and [[Thomas DiLorenzo|DiLorenzo]] seriously, pointing to their narrow political agenda and faulty research."<ref>{{cite journal |url= https://muse.jhu.edu/article/315139 |last=Dirck |first=Brian |title=''Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery'', and ''Act of Justice: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War'', and ''Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment'' (review) |journal=Civil War History |date=September 2009 |volume=55 |issue=3 |pages= 382–385|doi=10.1353/cwh.0.0090 |s2cid=143986160 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> In his ''Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation'', [[Allen C. Guelzo]] noted professional historians' lack of substantial respect for the document, since it has been the subject of few major scholarly studies. He argued that Lincoln was the U.S.'s "last [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] politician"<ref>{{harvnb|Guelzo|2006|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=MOFHPTQYqzgC&pg=PA3 3]}}</ref> and as such had "allegiance to 'reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason'.... But the most important among the Enlightenment's political virtues for Lincoln, and for his Proclamation, was prudence".<ref>{{harvnb|Guelzo|2006|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=MOFHPTQYqzgC&pg=PA3 3]}}</ref>

Other historians have given more credit to Lincoln for what he accomplished toward ending slavery and for his own growth in political and moral stature.<ref>Doris Kearns Goodwin, ''Team of Rivals'', New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005</ref> More might have been accomplished if he had not been assassinated. As [[Eric Foner]] wrote:
<blockquote>Lincoln was not an abolitionist or Radical Republican, a point Bennett reiterates innumerable times. He did not favor immediate abolition before the war, and held racist views typical of his time. But he was also a man of deep convictions when it came to slavery, and during the Civil War displayed a remarkable capacity for moral and political growth.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ericfoner.com/reviews/040900latimes.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041027065400/http://www.ericfoner.com/reviews/040900latimes.html|archive-date=2004-10-27|url-status=live |title=''Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream'' by Lerone Bennett, Jr. |first=Eric |last=Foner |publisher=Los Angeles Times Book Review |date=April 9, 2000}}</ref></blockquote>

==Legacy in the civil rights era==

===Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.===
[[File:President Barack Obama views the Emancipation Proclamation in the Oval Office 2010-01-18.jpg|thumb|President [[Barack Obama]] views the Emancipation Proclamation in the Oval Office hung above a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in 2010]]

Dr. [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] made many references to the Emancipation Proclamation during the [[civil rights movement]]. These include an "Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address" he gave in New York City on September 12, 1962, in which he placed the Proclamation alongside the Declaration of Independence as an "imperishable" contribution to civilization and added, "All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations...." He lamented that despite a history where the United States "proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents," it "sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles." He concluded, "There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. That is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://home.nps.gov/anti/learn/historyculture/mlk-ep.htm|title=Dr. Martin Luther King on the Emancipation Proclamation|publisher=National Park Service|author=Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.}}</ref>

King's most famous invocation of the Emancipation Proclamation was in a speech from the steps of the [[Lincoln Memorial]] at the 1963 [[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom]] (often referred to as the "[[I Have a Dream]]" speech). King began the speech saying "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/i-have-dream|title=I Have A Dream|publisher=The King Center|date=August 28, 1963|author=Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. |access-date=August 29, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140723170458/http://thekingcenter.org/archive/document/i-have-dream|archive-date=July 23, 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref>

====The "Second Emancipation Proclamation"====
{{Main|Second Emancipation Proclamation}}
In the early 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his associates called on President [[John F. Kennedy]] to bypass Southern segregationist opposition in the Congress by issuing an [[executive order]] to put an end to segregation.<ref>[https://www.crmvet.org/info/emancip2.htm Draft of Second Emancipation Proclamation]</ref> This envisioned document was referred to as the "Second Emancipation Proclamation". Kennedy, however, did not issue a second Emancipation Proclamation "and noticeably avoided all centennial celebrations of emancipation." Historian [[David W. Blight]] points out that, although the idea of an executive order to act as a second Emancipation Proclamation "has been virtually forgotten," the manifesto that King and his associates produced calling for an executive order showed his "close reading of American politics" and recalled how moral leadership could have an effect on the American public through an executive order. Despite its failure "to spur a second Emancipation Proclamation from the White House, it was an important and emphatic attempt to combat the structured forgetting of emancipation latent within Civil War memory."<ref>Blight, David W. and Allison Scharfstein, "King's Forgotten Manifesto". ''The New York Times'', May 16, 2012.</ref>

===President John F. Kennedy===
On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy spoke on national television about civil rights. Kennedy, who had been routinely criticized as timid by some civil rights activists, reminded Americans that two black students had been peacefully enrolled in the [[University of Alabama]] with the aid of the [[Army National Guard|National Guard]], despite [[Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|the opposition of Governor George Wallace]].

John Kennedy called it a "moral issue."<ref name=Peniel/> Invoking the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation he said,

{{blockquote|One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free. We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes? Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The [[Birmingham campaign|events in Birmingham]] and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.<ref>{{cite web |title=237 – Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights |date=June 11, 1963 |author=John F. Kennedy |url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9271&st=&st1=#}}</ref>}}

In the same speech, Kennedy announced he would introduce a comprehensive civil rights bill in the [[United States Congress]], which he did a week later. Kennedy pushed for its passage until he was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Historian [[Peniel E. Joseph]] holds Lyndon Johnson's ability to get that bill, the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]], signed into law on July 2, 1964, to have been aided by "the moral forcefulness of the June 11 speech", which had turned "the narrative of civil rights from a regional issue into a national story promoting racial equality and democratic renewal."<ref name=Peniel>{{cite news |title=Kennedy's Finest Moment |author=Peniel E. Joseph | author-link=Peniel E. Joseph |date=June 10, 2013 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/kennedys-civil-rights-triumph.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220101/https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/kennedys-civil-rights-triumph.html |archive-date=2022-01-01 |url-access=limited|newspaper=The New York Times}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

===President Lyndon B. Johnson===
During the [[civil rights movement]] of the 1960s, [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] invoked the Emancipation Proclamation, holding it up as a promise yet to be fully implemented.

As vice president, while speaking from Gettysburg on May 30, 1963 (Memorial Day), during the centennial year of the Emancipation Proclamation, Johnson connected it directly with the ongoing civil rights struggles of the time, saying "One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.... In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stake—it is our nation. Let those who care for their country come forward, North and South, white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision.... Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free."<ref>{{cite web|title=Remarks of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson|date=May 30, 1963|url=http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/630530.asp|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120329112921/http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/630530.asp|archive-date=March 29, 2012}}</ref>

As president, Johnson again invoked the Proclamation in a speech presenting the [[Voting Rights Act]] at a joint session of Congress on Monday, March 15, 1965. This was one week after violence had been inflicted on peaceful civil rights marchers during the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]]. Johnson said "it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And [[We Shall Overcome#Use in the 1960s civil rights and other protest movements|we shall overcome]]. As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil, I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed—more than 100 years—since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was more than 100 years ago that Abraham Lincoln—a great President of another party—signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact. A century has passed—more than 100 years—since equality was promised, and yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise, and the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come, and I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come, and when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American."<ref>{{cite web|title=We Shall Overcome|author=Lyndon B. Johnson|date=March 15, 1965|url=http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/johnson.htm}}</ref>

==In popular culture==
[[File:Emancipation Proclamation 1963 U.S. stamp.1.jpg|thumb|U.S. commemorative stamp, 1963 <ref name="Emancipation Proclamation Issue">"[https://arago.si.edu/record_202794_img_1.html Emancipation Proclamation Issue]", Arago: people, postage & the post, Smithsonian National Postal Museum, viewed September 28, 2014</ref>]]

In the 1963 [[List of The Andy Griffith Show episodes#Season Four (1963-64)|episode]] of ''[[The Andy Griffith Show]]'', "Andy Discovers America", Andy asks [[Barney Fife|Barney]] to explain the Emancipation Proclamation to [[Opie Taylor|Opie]] who is struggling with history at school.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tvland.com/shows/andy-griffith-show/episode-guide/season-3|title=Episode Guide|work=[[TV Land]]|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131113044056/http://www.tvland.com/shows/andy-griffith-show/episode-guide/season-3|archive-date=November 13, 2013}}</ref> Barney brags about his history expertise, yet it is apparent he cannot answer Andy's question. He finally becomes frustrated and explains it is a proclamation for certain people who wanted emancipation.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBXUaM6t58| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130101174953/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBXUaM6t58&gl=US&hl=en| archive-date=2013-01-01|title=Barney Fife Explains The Emancipation Proclamation|work=Episode clip, The Andy Griffith Show|via=YouTube}}</ref> In addition, the Emancipation Proclamation was also a main item of discussion in the movie ''[[Lincoln (film)|Lincoln]]'' (2012) directed by [[Steven Spielberg]].<ref>{{Cite news|last=Scott|first=A. O.|date=2012-11-08|title=A President Engaged in a Great Civil War|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/movies/lincoln-by-steven-spielberg-stars-daniel-day-lewis.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220101/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/movies/lincoln-by-steven-spielberg-stars-daniel-day-lewis.html |archive-date=2022-01-01 |url-access=limited|access-date=2021-06-01|issn=0362-4331}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

The Emancipation Proclamation is celebrated around the world, including on stamps of nations such as the Republic of [[Togo]].<ref>"[https://postalmuseum.si.edu/object/npm_2009.2004.1 .5fr Centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation]", Arago: people, postage & the post, Smithsonian National Postal Museum, viewed September 28, 2014</ref> The United States commemorative was issued on August 16, 1963, the opening day of the [[Century of Negro Progress Exhibition]] in Chicago, Illinois. Designed by [[Georg Olden (graphic designer)|Georg Olden]], an initial printing of 120&nbsp;million stamps was authorized.<ref name="Emancipation Proclamation Issue"/>

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==See also==
* [[1866 Georgia State Freedmen's Conventions]]
* [[Abolition of slavery timeline]]
* [[Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves]]
* [[Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves]] – 1862 statute
* [[Confiscation Acts]]
* [[Contraband (American Civil War)]]
* [[District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act]]
* ''[[Emancipation Memorial]]'' – a sculpture in Washington, D.C., completed in 1876
* [[Emancipation reform of 1861]] – Russia
* [[Juneteenth]] emancipation in Texas
* [[Lieber Code#Black prisoners of war|Lieber Code]]
* [[Reconstruction Amendments]] – amendments added to the Constitution after 1863
* [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833]] – an act passed by the British parliament abolishing slavery in British colonies with compensation to the owners
* [[Slave Trade Act]]s
* [[Territorial Slavery Act of 1862]]
* [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] – 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
* [[Timeline of the civil rights movement]]
* [[War Governors' Conference]] – gave Lincoln the much needed political support to issue the Proclamation

==References==
{{reflist}}

===Bibliography===
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book |last1=Foner |first1=Eric |author-link=Eric Foner |title=The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery |date=2010 |publisher=W. W. Norton |location=New York |isbn=978-0-393-06618-0}}
* {{cite book|last=Guelzo|first=Allen C.|author-link=Allen C. Guelzo|title=Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MOFHPTQYqzgC|year=2006|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=978-0-7432-9965-7}}
{{refend}}

===Primary sources===
{{refbegin}}
* C. Peter Ripley, Roy E. Finkenbine, Michael F. Hembree, Donald Yacovone, editors, ''Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation'' (1993) {{ISBN|0807820725}}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
{{Main|Bibliography of slavery in the United States}}
{{refbegin|colwidth=30em}}
* Belz, Herman. ''Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era'' (1978) [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103250477 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110816095105/http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103250477 |date=August 16, 2011 }}
* Biddle, Daniel R., and Murray Dubin. "'God Is Settling the Account': African American Reaction to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation", ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' (Jan. 2013) 137#1 57–78.
* Blackiston, Harry S. "Lincoln's Emancipation Plan." ''Journal of Negro History'' 7, no. 3 (1922): 257–277.
* Blair, William A. and Younger, Karen Fisher, eds. ''Lincoln's Proclamation: Emancipation Reconsidered'' (The University of North Carolina Press, 2009) {{ISBN|978-0-8078-3316-2}}. [https://www.fedbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/bookreviews-MA2010-pdf-1.pdf Review]
* Carnahan, Burrus M. ''Act of Justice: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War'' (The University Press of Kentucky, 2007) {{ISBN|978-0-8131-2463-6}}
* Crowther, Edward R. "Emancipation Proclamation", in ''Encyclopedia of the American Civil War.'' Heidler, David S. and Heidler, Jeanne T. (2000) {{ISBN|0-393-04758-X}}
* Chambers Jr., Henry L. "Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Executive Power." ''Maryland Law Review'' 73 (2013): 100+ [http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3599&context=mlr online]
* Ewan, Christopher. "The Emancipation Proclamation and British Public Opinion" ''The Historian'', Vol. 67, 2005
* [[John Hope Franklin|Franklin, John Hope]]. ''The Emancipation Proclamation'' (1963) [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=10793158 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120726125512/http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=10793158 |date=July 26, 2012 }}
* Guelzo, Allen C. [https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0025.103/--how-abe-lincoln-lost-the-black-vote-lincoln-and-emancipation?rgn=main;view=fulltext "How Abe Lincoln Lost the Black Vote: Lincoln and Emancipation in the African American Mind"], ''Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association'' (2004) 25#1
* [[Harold Holzer]], [[Edna Greene Medford]], and [[Frank J. Williams]]. ''The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views'' (Louisiana State University Press, 2006) {{ISBN|0-8071-3144-X}}
* [[Harold Holzer]]. ''Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory'' (Harvard University Press, 2012) {{ISBN|978-0-674-06440-9}}. [https://www.fedbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/bookrev-june12-pdf-1.pdf Review]
* Jones, Howard. ''Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War'' (1999) [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6928200 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120627151852/http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6928200 |date=June 27, 2012 }}
* [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105216005 Mitch Kachun, ''Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808–1915'' (2003)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070311070211/http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105216005 |date=March 11, 2007 }}
* Kennon, Donald R. and [[Paul Finkelman]], eds. ''Lincoln, Congress, and Emancipation'' (Ohio University Press, 2016)
* [[Peter Kolchin|Kolchin, Peter]], "Reexamining Southern Emancipation in Comparative Perspective," ''Journal of Southern History'', 81#1 (Feb. 2015), 7–40.
* [[Leon Litwack|Litwack, Leon F.]] ''Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery'' (1979), social history of the end of slavery in the Confederacy
* [[Denis Mack Smith|Mack Smith, Denis]], ''Garibaldi'' (Great Lives Observed). (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1969)
* [[James M. McPherson|McPherson, James M.]] ''Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction'' (2001 [3rd ed.]), esp. pp.&nbsp;316–321.
* [[Louis Masur|Masur, Louis P.]] ''Lincoln's Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union'' (Harvard University Press, 2012)
* [[Allan Nevins|Nevins, Allan]]. ''Ordeal of the Union: vol 6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863'' (1960)
* [[James Oakes (historian)|Oakes, James]]. ''Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865'' (W. W. Norton & Co., 2013) {{ISBN|978-0-393-06531-2}}. [https://www.fedbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/bookrev-octnov13-pdf-1.pdf Review]
* Siddali, Silvana R. ''From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861–1862'' (Louisiana State University Press, 2005) {{ISBN|0807130427}}
* [[John Stauffer (professor)|Stauffer, John]]. ''Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln'' (Twelve, 2008) {{ISBN|978-0-446-58009-0}}
* Syrett, John. ''Civil War Confiscation Acts: Failing to Reconstruct the South'' (2005)
* [[Hans L. Trefousse|Trefousse, Hans L.]], et al., edited by [[Harold M. Hyman]]. ''Lincoln's Decision for Emancipation'' (J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1975) {{ISBN|0-397-47336-2}}
* [[Alexander Tsesis|Tsesis, Alexander]]. ''We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law'' (2008)
* [https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105900244  Vorenberg, Michael. ''Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment'' (Cambridge University Press, 2001)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120525054940/http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105900244 |date=May 25, 2012 }}
* Vorenberg, Michael, ed. ''The Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with Documents'' (2010), primary and secondary sources
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{sister project links||d=Q391358|c=Category:Emancipation Proclamation|n=no|b=no|v=Analysis of the Emancipation Proclamation|voy=no|m=no|mw=no|s=The Emancipation Proclamation|wikt=no|species=no}}
* [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=C.160.c.4.(1)_f001r A zoomable image of the Leland-Boker authorized edition of the Emancipation Proclamation held by the British Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111208030144/http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=C.160.c.4.(1)_f001r |date=December 8, 2011 }}
* [https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=203915 Emancipation in Jefferson County Historical Marker]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20101122161527/http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=290 Lesson plan on Emancipation Proclamation from EDSITEment NEH]
* [https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation Text and images of the Emancipation Proclamation from the National Archives]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090210000843/http://abrahamlincoln200.org/for-kids/lincoln-coloring-book.aspx Online Lincoln Coloring Book for Teachers and Students]
* [https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/EmanProc.html Emancipation Proclamation and related resources at the Library of Congress]
* [http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=39&subjectID=3 Mr. Lincoln and Freedom: Emancipation Proclamation] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080623225840/http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=39&subjectID=3 |date=June 23, 2008 }}
* First Edition [http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1862/october/emancipation-proclamation.htm Emancipation Proclamation] in 1862 ''Harper's Weekly''
* [http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/chronol.htm Chronology of Emancipation during the Civil War] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011224131/http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/chronol.htm |date=October 11, 2007 }}
* [http://www.americanabolitionists.com/lincoln-chronology-on-slavery-and-emancipation.html American Abolitionists and Antislavery Activists], chronology of Abraham Lincoln and emancipation
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20030114103859/http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/hus-emancproc.htm "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation"]
* [http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/ep/ Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation at the New York State Library] – images and transcript of Lincoln's original manuscript of the preliminary proclamation
* [http://humorinamerica.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/in-the-archives-lincoln-diversion-1862/ The role of humor in presenting the Proclamation to Lincoln's Cabinet]
* [https://www.nytimes.com/1865/06/16/news/emancipation-proclamation-interesting-sketch-its-history-artist-carpenter.html?scp=32&sq=emancipation+proclamation&st=p&pagewanted=all 1865 ''NY Times'' article] – Sketch of its History by Lincoln's portrait artist
* {{Cite NIE|wstitle=Emancipation, Proclamation of|year=1905 |short=x}}
* [http://www.pritzkermilitarylibrary.org/Home/James-McPherson-2012.aspx Webcast Discussion] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130704053926/https://www.pritzkermilitarylibrary.org/Home/James-McPherson-2012.aspx |date=July 4, 2013 }} with Pulitzer Prize-winning author [[James Alan McPherson|James McPherson]] and James Cornelius, Curator of the Lincoln Collection in the [[Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum]] about the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation
* {{librivox book | title=The Emancipation Proclamation | author=Abraham LINCOLN}}

{{Abraham Lincoln}}
{{History of slavery in the United States}}
{{Juneteenth}}
{{American Civil War|expanded=Origins}}
{{Reconstruction Era}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Emancipation Proclamation}}
[[Category:1862 in American law]]
[[Category:September 1862]]
[[Category:Abolitionism in the United States]]
[[Category:African Americans in the American Civil War]]
[[Category:American Civil War documents]]
[[Category:Human rights instruments]]
[[Category:Presidency of Abraham Lincoln]]
[[Category:Proclamations]]
[[Category:Works about American slavery]]
[[Category:1863 in American politics]]
[[Category:1862 documents]]
[[Category:United States presidential directives]]
[[Category:United States executive orders]]
[[Category:Presidents of the United States and slavery]]
[[Category:1862 in American politics]]
[[Category:United States federal slavery legislation]]
[[Category:Military emancipation in the American Civil War]]
[[Category:United States proclamations]]