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Kieth.  1st

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"All persons held as slaves within a state or a designated part of a state, the people whereof shall be in rebellion of the united states, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

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"All persons held as slaves within a state or a designated part of a state, the people whereof shall be in rebellion of the united states, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

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"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."

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"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."

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National Conversations on Rights and Justice Women 's Rights and Gender Equality RACO Panel

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The Emancipation Proclamation 150 Years: Pre and Post  (Part 2)

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As part of their Documented Rights Exhibit, the National Archives of St. Louis host a panel discussing African-American rights and the Emancipation Proclamation. Speakers include Lynne Jackson, Reverend Dr. Charles Robert Scott, Bonita Cornute, Dr. Louis Saxton Gerteis, Mr. James Vincent Sr., Dr. Priscilla Dowden-White, and Dr. Gerald Early.

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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. The slaves that were already free were allies to the union which allowed the to have an advantage over the south. The union already had more soldiers so this was partially a turning point

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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. The slaves that were already free were allies to the union which allowed the to have an advantage over the south. The union already had more soldiers so this was partially a turning point

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Abraham Lincoln: The Emancipation Proclamation | Biography

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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. The border states would have changed the war if they were rebellious states. They would have surrounded the capital of the union and they would have had a better chance of winning the war.

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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. The border states would have changed the war if they were rebellious states. They would have surrounded the capital of the union and they would have had a better chance of winning the war.

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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."  The south disliked this even more because they were being told what to do so they wanted to rebel even more.

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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."  The south disliked this even more because they were being told what to do so they wanted to rebel even more.

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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 any 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.
READ MORE: Slavery in America

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.
READ MORE: 5 Things You May Not Know About Abraham Lincoln, Slavery and Emancipation
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

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

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."
READ MORE: How the Black Codes Limited African American Progress After the Civil War
Sources

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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Issued after the Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation carried moral and strategic implications for the ongoing Civil War. While it did not free a single enslaved person, it was an important turning point in the war, transforming the fight to preserve the nation into a battle for human freedom.