Title: Emancipation Proclamation
Headings: Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
Information and Articles About the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War
Emancipation Proclamation Facts
Importance
Full Text
The First Confiscation Act
Lincoln In Search Of A Union Victory
What Effect Did The Emancipation Proclamation Have?
Emancipation Proclamation Text
Articles Featuring The Emancipation Proclamation From History Net Magazines
A Promised Fulfilled

Content: On July 17, 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, which declared that slaves held by supporters of the Confederacy who crossed over Union lines were "forever free." Less than a week later, on July 22, 1862, Lincoln surprised his Cabinet by reading a draft Emancipation Proclamation, asking for revisions and refinements to the document. Though Lincoln was still wary of linking abolition to the war and driving the slave-holding border states to support the Confederacy, it became clear to him that popular sentiment in the North had begun to support abolition as one of the purposes of the war. Lincoln In Search Of A Union Victory
Lincoln needed a decisive Union victory to lend credence to the proclamation and got one at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, which had ended Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s first Northern invasion. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln signed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which informed both the Confederacy and the Union of his intention to free all persons held as slaves in the rebellious states. As promised in the preliminary proclamation, 100 days later, on January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The five-page document declared that slaves in the rebel states were free, provided them with the support of the U.S. government—including the Army and Navy, declared that freed slaves should be paid a wage, urged freed slaves to abstain from violence except in self-defense, and publically declared that all suitable freed men would be accepted into the armed services to fight in the war. What Effect Did The Emancipation Proclamation Have? However, many argued that the proclamation didn’t actually free any slaves or destroy the institution of slavery itself—it still only applied to states in active rebellion, not to the slave-holding border states or to rebel areas already under Union control. In reality, it simply freed Union army officers from returning runaway slaves to their owners under the national Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.