Emancipation Proclamation #2059
Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order in 1863 by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, which declared the freedom of all slaves in those areas of the rebellious Confederate States of America that had not already returned to Union control.
The proclamation made the end of slavery a central goal of the war (along with restoring the Union) and was highly controversial in the North. It was not a law passed by Congress but a presidential order empowered, Lincoln knew, by his position as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy” under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution. It first affected only those slaves that had already escaped to the Union side, but as the Union armies conquered the south, thousands of slaves were freed each day until nearly all (estimated at 4 million) were free by the summer of 1865. Some slavery continued to exist in the border states until the entire institution was finally wiped out by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865.
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