The Emancipation Proclamation
Issued January 1, 1863

The president frees the slaves

"I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free. . . ."

By the time President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, he had been considering the idea of freeing the slaves for some time. Lincoln had believed that slavery was wrong when he was elected president in 1860. He felt that black people were entitled to the same legal rights as white people. When the Civil War began in 1861, he knew that freeing the slaves would hurt the Confederate war effort and aid the Union. But he still wanted to proceed carefully, because he knew that emancipation (the act of freeing people from slavery or oppression) had many opponents, even in the...