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Emancipation Proclamation, 1863
Soon after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Southern states began to secede from the Union. This led to civil war. After nearly a year and a half of war, President Lincoln called emancipation of slaves "a fit and necessary war measure." His Emancipation Proclamation said, in part, that on January 1, 1863, "all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state . . . in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward and forever free." The proclamation also allowed the recruitment of African Americans into the United States military. More than 186,000 enlisted by the end of the war. It was actually the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in December 1865, that ended slavery. |