The Emancipation Proclamation
WHAT WAS THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION AND WHEN WAS IT ISSUED?
The Emancipation Proclamation was an edict of monumental significance in the history of the United States. Issued by President Abraham Lincoln, it declared that all enslaved people in the Confederate states – which had seceded from the US and were at war with the Union in the North – “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”.
The proclamation was issued twice: the first, on 22 September 1862, was an ultimatum to the Confederacy to rejoin the Union within 100 days; and when all states refused, it officially came into effect on New Year’s Day 1863. While it only applied to the South and had been instigated more out of “military necessity” than a moral imperative, the document transformed the fate of the American Civil War, gave hope to millions of black people living in bondage, and paved the way for the abolition of slavery.
HOW LONG HAD THERE BEEN SLAVERY IN THE US?
Before it became the independent United States of America in 1776, the British colonies in North America had been shipping African men
