On the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, which led to the end of slavery on January 1, 1963. Abraham Lincoln issued this because, he had warned if the states of the Confederacy (South) didn’t return to the Union (North), by January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves “forever free.” The South refused, so Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Emancipation Proclamation Defined
Emancipation is the act of setting free from the power of another, from slavery. Proclamation means to announce officially and publicly, or declare. The Emancipation Proclamation means to free from slavery and declare it publicly.
Trouble from the South
In 1860 and 1861, eleven states withdrew from the Union, mainly because they feared Lincoln would take away their right to have black slaves. The North went to war with the South, to reunite the nation, not to end slavery. This war is known as the Civil War. During the first half of the war, abolitionists, people who wanted to end slavery, and Union military leaders encouraged Lincoln to create a proclamation freeing the slaves.
They thought that such a policy would help the North, because the South was using slaves to tend to their farms and factories, which made Whites available to fight for the Confederate Army. Lincoln had been reluctant to come to this position. A believer in white supremacy, he initially viewed the war only in terms of preserving the Union. As pressure for abolition mounted in Congress and the country, however, Lincoln became more sympathetic to the idea.
Slaves were Freed to Win the War
In 1862, the war was not looking good for the North (they were losing), so Congress passed a law that freed all Confederate slaves that made it across the North’s Lines. By allowing former slaves to join the Union’s Army helped the North in the war. Now that the Union was winning the war Lincoln decided to try to free the South’s slaves, but he waited until the Union had a military victory.
The Abolitionists were right that the Emancipation Proclamation would help the Union win the war. It helped the Union by reinforcing the North’s war effort and weakening the South’s. Now the South was expecting France and Britain to fight on their side, because the South supplied them with cotton. Most French and British citizens were against slavery, though, so when the Proclamation made the war a fight against slavery, France and Britain gave their support to the Union.
Near the end of the war, abolitionists were concerned that while the Proclamation had freed most slaves as a war measure, it had not made slavery illegal. Several former slave states had already passed legislation prohibiting slavery; however, in a few states, slavery continued to be legal, and to exist, until December 18, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted.
At the end of the war, over 500,000 slaves had escaped to freedom. Most of the slaves worked for the armed forces as laborers, people who wouldn’t fight but instead cleaned or cooked. They also joined the Union Army or Navy. Approximately 200,000 black sailors and soldiers helped the North win the war.
Note: Two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and the enslaved were free.
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