LAD #16: Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive decree by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln during that country's Civil War, which declared the freedom of all slaves in those areas of the rebellious Confederate States of America that had not already returned to Union control. It was issued in two parts: the preliminary document published on September 22, 1862; and the second, published when the decree went into effect 100 days later, January 1, 1863. It was not a law passed by Congress but a Presidential order empowered, Lincoln believed, by his position as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy". It first affected only those slaves that had already escaped to the Union side, but as the Union armies advanced, tens of thousands of slaves were liberated each day until nearly all were free by summer 1865. Some slavery continued to exist in the border states until the entire institution was finally wiped out by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865. The legality of the Proclamation was never tested in court because legal and scholarly opinion has consistently deemed it to have been a valid use of Presidential authority. Emancipation took place without violence by masters or ex-slaves. The proclamation represented a shift in the war objectives of the North—merely reuniting the nation would no longer become the sole outcome. It represented a major step toward the ultimate abolition of slavery in the United States and the formation of a "more perfect Union."