The emancipation proclamation is two laws passed by the US president Abraham Lincoln during the American civil war. It was made on the 22nd of September 1862 and declared the freedom of all states .
It was attacked as the union which was in control of freeing the had little power. The proclamation did not free any slaves of the border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia), or any southern state (or part of a state) already under Union control. It first directly affected only those slaves that had already escaped to the Union side, but as the Union armies conquered the Confederacy, thousands of slaves were freed each day until nearly all (approximately 4 million, according to the 1860 census) were freed by July of 1865.
After the war there was concern that the proclamation, as a war measure, had not made the elimination of slavery permanent. Several former slave states had prohibited slavery; however, some slavery continued to exist until the entire institution was finally wiped out by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865.
Monday, 30 June 2008
