The Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862 and put into effect on January 1, 1863, proclaimed freedom for slaves in the ten states that were in rebellion at the time. Though the document did not make these freed men and women citizens or outlaw slavery, it freed millions of American slaves, and changed the way the nation viewed the Civil War. Before the proclamation, the war had been publicly waged as a struggle to preserve the union; after, the war had the reverberations of social reform. The words: “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,” are still profoundly recognized today.
About The Author: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was born on February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, in a farm in Hardin County, Kentucky. Raised in rural, impoverished environments in Indiana and Illinois, Lincoln was largely self-taught.
Lincoln’s natural intelligence and zealous interest in American politics led him to a career as a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator and a one-term member of the United State House of Representatives. Lincoln had to endure the blow of two failed attempts to be elected to the United States Senate before winning a much bigger contest in 1860 when, opposing the expansion of slavery, he became the first Republican party member to win the presidential election.
As the the sixteenth president of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865, Lincoln presided over the most fraught, bloodiest era in U.S. history. Barely six weeks after his inaugural address, Confederate troops attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina igniting the beginning of the Civil War. During his time in office, Lincoln freed millions of slaves by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, delivered the Gettysburg Address and worked tirelessly to preserve the Union, end slavery and promote economic modernization. He remains one of the most revered presidents in the nation’s history.
