Title: Emancipation Proclamation - Wikipedia
Headings: Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
Contents
Authority
Coverage
Background
Military action prior to emancipation
Governmental action toward emancipation
Public opinion of emancipation
Drafting and issuance of the proclamation
Implementation
Immediate impact
Political impact
Confederate response
International impact
Gettysburg Address
Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (1863)
Postbellum
Critiques
Legacy in the civil rights era
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The "Second Emancipation Proclamation"
President John F. Kennedy
President Lyndon B. Johnson
In popular culture
See also
Notes
Primary sources
Further reading
External links

Content: The Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners and their sympathizers, who saw it as the beginning of a race war. It energized abolitionists, and undermined those Europeans that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy. The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both free and enslaved; it led many to escape from their masters and get to Union lines to obtain their freedom, and to join the Union Army. 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." The Emancipation Proclamation was never challenged in court. To ensure the abolition of slavery in all of the U.S., Lincoln also insisted that Reconstruction plans for Southern states require abolition in new state laws (which occurred during the war in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana); Lincoln encouraged border states to adopt abolition (which occurred during the war in Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia) and pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Congress passed the 13th Amendment by the necessary two-thirds vote on January 31, 1865, and it was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. The amendment made chattel slavery and indentured servitude illegal.