Title: Slavery abolished in America with adoption of 13th amendment - HISTORY
Headings: Slavery abolished in America with adoption of 13th amendment
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Slavery abolished in America with adoption of 13th amendment
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Content: The liberation of enslaved people would weaken the Confederacy by depriving it of a major portion of its labor force, which would in turn strengthen the Union by producing an influx of manpower. With 11 Southern states seceded from the Union, there were few pro-slavery congressmen to stand in the way of such an action. In 1862, Congress annulled the fugitive slave laws, prohibited slavery in the U.S. territories, and authorized Lincoln to employ formerly enslaved people in the army. Following the major Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September, Lincoln issued a warning of his intent to issue an emancipation proclamation for all states still in rebellion on New Year’s Day. READ MORE: Black Heroes of the American Civil War
That day—January 1, 1863—President Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation, calling on the Union army to liberate all enslaved people in states still in rebellion as “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.” These three million enslaved people were declared to be “then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The proclamation exempted the border states that remained in the Union and all or parts of three Confederate states controlled by the Union army. The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the Civil War from a war against secession into a war for “a new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address in 1863. This ideological change discouraged the intervention of France or England on the Confederacy’s behalf and enabled the Union to enlist the 180,000 African American soldiers and sailors who volunteered to fight between January 1, 1863, and the conclusion of the war.