President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation Takes Effect
President Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation in September 1862, declaring that “all persons held as slaves [in] the rebellious states” would be free if rebels did not stop fighting and rejoin the union by this day.
None did stop fighting, so the Proclamation took effect for those states. Lincoln’s Proclamation did not, however, end slavery in the states of the Union. In short, Lincoln ended abolished slavery where he did not have the power to do it, and did not abolish slavery where he did have the power to do it. The Emancipation was essentially a war measure and not a principled, comprehensive abolition of all slavery.
The Proclamation did allow for acceptance of African-Americans in the Union Army and Navy — and opened the door for eventual passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed all slavery and “involuntary servitude,” ratified on December 6, 1865.
The emancipation of American slaves has long been celebrated on “Juneteenth,” June 19th, also known as “Freedom Day,” “Jubilee Day,” and “Liberation Day.” It originated in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1965, when Union Army General Gordon Granger proclaimed that slaves in Texas were free. News of emancipation had been slow to reach Texas because of its distance from Washington, DC, and the relatively few number of Union troops in the state.
The Proclamation: ” . . . on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; . . . .”
Read about the Proclamation: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/
Learn more about Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation: Allen Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2004)
And more: Louis Masur, Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union (2012)
Learn more about Juneteenth here