essay on the emancipation proclamation

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Emancipation Proclamation

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 20, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

Lincoln didn’t actually free all of the approximately 4 million men, women and children held in slavery in the United States when he signed the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following January. The document applied only to enslaved people in the Confederacy, and not to those in the border states that remained loyal to the Union.

But although it was presented chiefly as a military measure, the proclamation marked a crucial shift in Lincoln’s views on slavery. Emancipation 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.

Abe Lincoln's Developing Views on Slavery

Sectional tensions over slavery in the United States had been building for decades by 1854, when Congress’ passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened territory that had previously been closed to slavery according to the Missouri Compromise . Opposition to the act led to the formation of the Republican Party in 1854 and revived the failing political career of an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, who rose from obscurity to national prominence and claimed the Republican nomination for president in 1860.

Lincoln personally hated slavery, and considered it immoral. "If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that 'all men are created equal;' and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another," he said in a now-famous speech in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854. But Lincoln didn’t believe the Constitution gave the federal government the power to abolish it in the states where it already existed, only to prevent its establishment to new western territories that would eventually become states.

In his first inaugural address in early 1861, he declared that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.” By that time, however, seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union, forming the Confederate States of America and setting the stage for the Civil War.

First Years of the Civil War

At the outset of that conflict, Lincoln insisted that the war was not about freeing enslaved people in the South but about preserving the Union. Four border slave states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri) remained on the Union side, and many others in the North also opposed abolition. When one of his generals, John C. Frémont, put Missouri under martial law, declaring that Confederate sympathizers would have their property seized, and their enslaved people would be freed (the first emancipation proclamation of the war), Lincoln directed him to reverse that policy, and later removed him from command.

But hundreds of enslaved men, women and children were fleeing to Union-controlled areas in the South, such as Fortress Monroe in Virginia, where Gen. Benjamin F. Butler had declared them “contraband” of war, defying the Fugitive Slave Law mandating their return to their owners. Abolitionists argued that freeing enslaved people in the South would help the Union win the war, as enslaved labor was vital to the Confederate war effort.

In July 1862, Congress passed the Militia Act, which allowed Black men to serve in the U.S. armed forces as laborers, and the Confiscation Act, which mandated that enslaved people seized from Confederate supporters would be declared forever free. Lincoln also tried to get the border states to agree to gradual emancipation, including compensation to enslavers, with little success. When abolitionists criticized him for not coming out with a stronger emancipation policy, Lincoln replied that he valued saving the Union over all else.

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or to destroy slavery,” he wrote in an editorial published in the Daily National Intelligencer in August 1862. “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

From Preliminary to Formal Emancipation Proclamation 

At the same time however, Lincoln’s cabinet was mulling over the document that would become the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln had written a draft in late July, and while some of his advisers supported it, others were anxious. William H. Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, urged the president to wait to announce emancipation until the Union won a significant victory on the battlefield, and Lincoln took his advice.

On September 17, 1862, Union troops halted the advance of Confederate forces led by Gen. Robert E. Lee near Sharpsburg, Maryland, in the Battle of Antietam . Days later, Lincoln went public with the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which called on all Confederate states to rejoin the Union within 100 days—by January 1, 1863—or their slaves would be declared “thenceforward, and forever free.”

On January 1, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which included nothing about gradual emancipation, compensation for enslavers or Black emigration and colonization, a policy Lincoln had supported in the past. Lincoln justified emancipation as a wartime measure, and was careful to apply it only to the Confederate states currently in rebellion. Exempt from the proclamation were the four border slave states and all or parts of three Confederate states controlled by the Union Army. 

Impact of the Emancipation Proclamation

As Lincoln’s decree applied only to territory outside the realm of his control, the Emancipation Proclamation had little actual effect on freeing any of the nation’s enslaved people. But its symbolic power was enormous, as it announced freedom for enslaved people as one of the North’s war aims, alongside preserving the Union itself. It also had practical effects: Nations like Britain and France, which had previously considered supporting the Confederacy to expand their power and influence, backed off due to their steadfast opposition to slavery. Black Americans were permitted to serve in the Union Army for the first time, and nearly 200,000 would do so by the end of the war.

Finally, the Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for the permanent abolition of slavery in the United States. As Lincoln and his allies in Congress realized emancipation would have no constitutional basis after the war ended, they soon began working to enact a Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. By the end of January 1865, both houses of Congress had passed the 13th Amendment , and it was ratified that December.

"It is my greatest and most enduring contribution to the history of the war,” Lincoln said of emancipation in February 1865, two months before his assassination. “It is, in fact, the central act of my administration, and the great event of the 19th century."

The Emancipation Proclamation, National Archives 10 Facts: The Emancipation Proclamation, American Battlefield Trust Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010) Allen C. Guelzo, “Emancipation and the Quest for Freedom.” National Park Service .

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34a. The Emancipation Proclamation

Americans tend to think of the Civil War as being fought to end slavery. Even one full year into the Civil War, the elimination of slavery was not a key objective of the North. Despite a vocal Abolitionist movement in the North, many people and many soldiers, in particular, opposed slavery, but did not favor emancipation. They expected slavery to die on its own over time. — Union states that still permitted slavery — the situation was full of problems. When a Union officer in Kentucky freed local slaves after a major victory, Union soldiers threw down their arms and disbanded. Lincoln intervened and "unfreed" those slaves. He did this to prevent a military backlash.-->

Click here for the full text of the Emancipation Proclamation

The emancipation proclamation.

By the President of the United States of America:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

"That 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; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St.Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

By mid-1862 Lincoln had come to believe in the need to end slavery. Besides his disdain for the institution, he simply felt that the South could not come back into the Union after trying to destroy it. The opposition Democratic Party threatened to turn itself into an antiwar party. Lincoln's military commander, General George McClellan, was vehemently against emancipation. Many Republicans who backed policies that forbid black settlement in their states were against granting blacks additional rights. When Lincoln indicated he wanted to issue a proclamation of freedom to his cabinet in mid-1862, they convinced him he had to wait until the Union achieved a significant military success.

That victory came in September at Antietam. No foreign country wants to ally with a potential losing power. By achieving victory, the Union demonstrated to the British that the South may lose. As a result, the British did not recognize the Confederate States of America, and Antietam became one of the war's most important diplomatic battles, as well as one of the bloodiest. Five days after the battle, Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863. Unless the Confederate States returned to the Union by that day, he proclaimed their slaves "shall be then, thenceforward and forever free."

It is sometimes said that the Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves. In a way, this is true. The proclamation would only apply to the Confederate States, as an act to seize enemy resources. By freeing slaves in the Confederacy, Lincoln was actually freeing people he did not directly control. The way he explained the Proclamation made it acceptable to much of the Union army. He emphasized emancipation as a way to shorten the war by taking Southern resources and hence reducing Confederate strength. Even McClellan supported the policy as a soldier. Lincoln made no such offer of freedom to the border states.

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Emancipation Proclamation: An Introduction

On September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Under his wartime authority as commander-in-chief, he ordered that as of January 1, 1863, enslaved individuals in all areas still in rebellion against the United States “henceforward shall be free.” On New Years’ Day, the day the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, cannon shots fired, church bells rang, and speakers orated at public observances throughout the North and in Union-held areas of the South. January 1, formerly known among the enslaved as “Heartbreak Day” for the large slave auctions often held, would be known henceforth as a day of deliverance and jubilee.

In Union-held Beaufort, South Carolina, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson presided over a ceremony where the Proclamation was read publicly. After the reading, Higginson related, he waved the flag and there arose from among the freed slaves on hand an “elderly male voice, into which two women’s voices instantly blended, singing . . . ‘My Country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty.’. . . I never saw anything so electric; it made all other words cheap . . . the life of the whole day was in those unknown people’s song.”

The Proclamation was carried and read as portions of the South were occupied. Every advance of the Union army thus became a liberating step, providing for the nation the possibility of what Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address called “a new birth of freedom.” As Frederick Douglass, one of the individuals who had the greatest influence on Lincoln in issuing the document declared, “We are all liberated by this Proclamation. . . . The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated.”

. . . ‘My Country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty.’. . . I never saw anything so electric; it made all other words cheap . . . the life of the whole day was in those unknown people’s song. Union General Thomas Wentworth

Even though the Emancipation Proclamation was made effective in 1863, it could not be implemented in places still under Confederate control. As a result, in the westernmost Confederate state of Texas, nominal freedom came on June 19, 1865, when some two thousand Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, at the end of the Civil War, and announced that enslaved Black people in the state were no longer in bondage, although most held in slavery had not waited to be freed. This day came to be known as "Juneteenth" by African Americans in Texas, heralding our country’s second Independence Day and now officially recognized as a national holiday. By the end of the war, millions of enslaved people, some with the assistance of the US Army and the federal government, had seized their own freedom.

The story of the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the most important documents of freedom in American history, and the wider story of emancipation of which it is a vital part, was never inevitable. The process through which the Proclamation was crafted reveals a deeper and wider story about the meaning of freedom in America and the paradox of liberty in a nation founded with slavery structured into the Constitution and a mainspring of its economic, social, and political life. It also provides a window into a long story of freedom seeking and making by African Americans that continues to have deep meaning today.

We are all liberated by this Proclamation. . . . The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated. -Fredrick Douglass

President Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation as a matter of military and diplomatic necessity but also because of his growing recognition of abolition as a matter of moral necessity and his ongoing struggle to embrace wider rights of African Americans within the nation—all of which continued up until his assassination. He hoped to undermine the Confederate war effort by declaring enslaved people free in only those ten rebellious states. Nonetheless, emancipation became a moral and social imperative. Long before the Proclamation was envisioned, Black abolitionists along with white allies had fostered a decades-long movement and political crisis that seized upon wartime conditions and led in 1862 to the emancipation acts in federal territories and the nation’s capital, Washington, DC. Enslaved African Americans who had sought freedom for generations further forced collective emancipation by fleeing to Union camps by the tens of thousands. In the nation’s capital Lincoln himself witnessed African American freedom claims as he passed through tent cities built by fugitives from slavery.

While the Proclamation was limited and conservative by intent, its impact was revolutionary. The Civil War, which began as a war to preserve the Union, was transformed by the stroke of a pen into a war to end slavery, yoking the project of freedom for all to the very survival of the nation. Its repercussions meant more than just the end of slavery. It signaled the possibility of a second founding for America—one that included the potential for African Americans to find equality as full citizens in American society.

A carte-de-visite sized card with handwritten text of the Emancipation Proclamation. The text is on a sheet that has been pasted onto the card. The text at the top and bottom of the card reads [The Emancipation Proclamation of / Abraham Lincoln President of the U.S.] with the text of the proclamation appearing inside a hand-drawn, rectangular border.

The Thirteenth Amendment, issued on December 6, 1865, completed what free and enslaved African Americans, abolitionists, and the Emancipation Proclamation had set in motion, formally abolishing slavery throughout the United States. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments provided equal protection of the law for all citizens, extended the vote to Black men, and banned racial discrimination in voting. They transformed the United States into the first interracial democracy in world history, albeit one that continued to be threatened by segregation, injustice, and racial violence.

The struggle to fulfill the promises of liberty, equality, and justice for all would continue for generations to come. In this struggle for fuller freedom, we find the roots of many movements for civil and human rights that exist today, demonstrating that the work of seeking equality and justice for all in the United States is unfinished and ongoing.

— Paul Gardullo, Historian, Curator, and Director of the Center for the Study of Global Slavery, National Museum of African American History and Culture

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The Emancipation Proclamation

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The Emancipation Proclamation (page 1) Record Group 11 General Records of the United States

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President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

Select Resources

• Transcript of the Proclamation
• The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, 1862
• "The Emancipation Proclamation: An Act of Justice" by John Hope Franklin.
• Audio: Former slave Charlie Smith discusses work and living situation after the Emancipation Proclamation . (357K, 0:46) from NARA's National Archives Catalog (NWDNM(s)-16.332B)
• The Charters of Freedom  

The National Archives’ annual display of the Emancipation Proclamation is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of The Boeing Company.

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History Resources

The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863

A spotlight on a primary source by abraham lincoln.

This elaborately decorated copy of the Emancipation Proclamation was designed by a fourteen-year-old boy and signed by Lincoln himself. In the proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863, Lincoln used no uncertain terms in declaring that "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."

A  full transcript  is available.

[O]n 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; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

Questions for Discussion

Read the document introduction and the transcript, and apply your knowledge of American history in order to answer the questions that follow.  

• How does President Lincoln very specifically justify and explain his proclamation?
• Lincoln exempts a city and parishes in Louisiana as well as certain counties from the proclamation. How can you explain why they are “left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued”?
• Review the final four paragraphs. List and explain the significance of the changes in the lives of former slaves that Lincoln hopes will take place as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation.
• Why do you think Lincoln chose to sign the Butler copy?

A printer-friendly version is available  here .

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