Emancipation Proclamation
On this day, 22 September 1862, United States President Abraham Lincoln announced that he would issue a formal emancipation of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1863. None did return and the actual order was signed and issued 1 January 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation’s 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them. The Proclamation did not compensate the owners; it did not make the ex-slaves, called Freedmen, citizens. Total abolition of slavery was finalized by the Thirteenth Amendment which took effect in December 1865.
09.22.11
