Emancipation proclamation how many slaves were freed

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, , as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free. Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states.

It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy the Southern secessionist states that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union United States military victory. Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war.

President Lincoln justified the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure intended to cripple the Confederacy. Being careful to respect the limits of his authority, Lincoln applied the Emancipation Proclamation only to the Southern states in rebellion. When President Lincoln first proposed the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet in the summer of , many of the cabinet secretaries were apathetic, or worse, worried that the Proclamation was too radical.

President Lincoln had first proposed the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet in July , but Secretary of State William Seward suggested waiting for a Union victory so that the government could prove that it could enforce the Proclamation. The Southern states used slaves to support their armies on the field and to manage the home front so more men could go off to fight.

Up until September , the main focus of the war had been to preserve the Union. With the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation freedom for slaves now became a legitimate war aim. Fact 7: The Emancipation Proclamation helped prevent the involvement of foreign nations in the Civil War.

Britain and France had considered supporting the Confederacy in order to expand their influence in the Western Hemisphere. However, many Europeans were against slavery. Although some in the United Kingdom saw the Emancipation Proclamation as overly limited and reckless, Lincoln's directive reinforced the shift of the international political mood against intervention while the Union victory at Antietam further disturbed those who didn't want to intervene on the side of a lost cause.

Fact 8: The Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for African-Americans to fight for their freedom. By the end of the war, over , African-Americans would serve in the Union army and navy. What factors influenced their responses and subsequent decisions? How did slaveholders respond to the emancipation of their slaves?

How did newly freed slaves perceive and adjust to the slaveholders' responses? This cycle of questions is worth the insight you may gain about the tumultuous year of What impressions do the former slaves recount of the "Yankees"? In what ways did newly freed slaves understand the concept of "freedom"? What promise, challenge, and mystery did "freedom" offer? What misconceptions about emancipation, and freedom, are expressed in the WPA narratives? In the months after emancipation, how did freed slaves learn what freedom meant for their own lives?

Consider reading the postwar sections of the former slaves' WPA narratives; see Supplemental Links below. Create two-person dialogues between WPA interviewees who responded differently to emancipation, e. Write an overview of the emancipation experience based on these documents. Begin with one of these statements from the WPA narratives.

I begins to think and to know things. And I know then I could make a living for my own self, and I never had to be a slave no more. And it don't mean we is equal. How did enslaved African Americans construct communities over time?