Title: The Emancipation Proclamation (Jan. 1, 1863) Summary & Full Text
Headings: Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
Background
The Confiscation Acts
Toward Emancipation
The Proclamation
The Thirteenth Amendment

Content: The Emancipation Proclamation (Jan. 1, 1863) Summary & Full Text
Emancipation Proclamation
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The Emancipation Proclamation is the name given to an executive order signed by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War and which took effect on January 1, 1863. The order decreed that all slaves in the ten rebel Confederate states would be considered free now and forever, although the freed slaves did not receive citizenship. This marked the point at which the goals of the war for the North widened from simply remaking the Union to also proclaiming the end of slavery as an explicit aim. Background
At the outbreak of the war in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln took care to present it as a fight to maintain the unity of the Union, rather than a struggle aimed at abolishing slavery. Despite his personal opposition to the institution, he was aware that he could not win support for abolition as an objective of war, especially from slave states along the North-South border. By the middle of 1862, however, with slaves rushing by the thousand to the North, Lincoln had been persuaded that supporting abolition had become a necessity from a military perspective. Lincoln had made strong speeches against slavery before he had even become President: in the 1850s, he had called it “an unqualified evil.” However, on his inauguration in 1861, he was clear that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly” to suppress slavery in the slave states. This was still his message several months into the Civil War itself.