EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
President Abraham Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of a
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 Union, leaving
slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of
the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the
freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation did
not immediately free a single slave, it 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 slavery's final destruction.
The Emancipation Proclamation had 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, D.C.
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.
Revised: July 18, 2013.