The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by US President Abraham Lincoln on 1 January 1863, at the height of the American Civil War (1861 to 1865). It proclaimed that "all persons held in bondage" within the rebellious Confederate States "are, and henceforward, shall be free." The Proclamation legally freed 3.5 million people enslaved across ten Southern states; however, since the US federal government had no control over these states at the time, it did not have much of an immediate impact on their lives. Nor did it free the hundreds of thousands of people who were still enslaved in states loyal to the Union.

Instead, the effect was mostly symbolic. It redefined the purpose of the Civil War, from a simple rebellion over states' rights to a moral crusade against the institution of slavery. It won over the hearts and minds of sympathetic White Northerners, giving them a noble cause to fight for, and led 200,000 African Americans to enlist in the Union Army. It also discouraged European powers like the United Kingdom and France from giving political or military support to the Southern Confederacy, lest they appear to support slavery themselves. Most importantly, the Emancipation Proclamation was a crucial first step toward the total, nationwide abolition of slavery, which would occur a few years later with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Since 1619, when the first enslaved Africans set foot on Virginian soil, the United States had wrestled with the institution of slavery. At first, it had spread like a virus, infecting each of the Thirteen Colonies – in 1775, on the eve of the American Revolution, 450,000 people lived in perpetual bondage. Slavery mainly prospered in the South, where it formed the bedrock of those colonies' agrarian economies, providing wealth and power to the elite planter ruling class. Here, many enslaved Black Americans spent their lives toiling on tobacco – and later, cotton – plantations under harsh conditions, and were legally viewed as property instead of people. Though slavery was less prevalent in the New England colonies than in the Middle and Southern English colonies, it existed there too, with enslaved people more often seen in domestic roles.

The existence of slavery in Colonial America was at odds with the egalitarian principles expressed by the American Revolution. The Patriots claimed to be fighting against tyranny for a new world based on the ideals of the Enlightenment. In the Declaration of Independence, slaveholder Thomas Jefferson famously, and ironically, wrote that "all men are created equal," endowed with certain unalienable rights including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This phrasing, of course, raised some uncomfortable questions. Were Black men not, after all, men? Were they not also created equal? If so, what right did the White men have to hold them in bondage?

These questions were largely sidelined by the slave-holding revolutionaries; at best, they claimed they needed to win their own freedom before worrying about slavery. But across the ocean, British politicians and thinkers were quick to point out the Americans' hypocrisy. "How is it," author Dr. Samuel Johnson asked, "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" (quoted in battlefields.org).

Indeed, slavery weighed on the consciences of some Americans, while others simply found the institution to no longer be economically viable. In the decades following the Revolution, most Northern states phased out slavery through processes of gradual emancipation. At the same time, legislation like the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited the westward expansion of slavery, and, in 1808, Congress abolished the transatlantic slave trade. It seemed – as Abraham Lincoln and other antislavery politicians would later suggest – that the Founding Fathers meant to limit the spread of slavery and confine it to the places where it already existed, so that it could wither and die a natural death.

But the Southern slaveocracies, which relied on slavery for their very existence, were not about to let this happen. Beginning with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, a great many political battles were waged over the expansion of slavery. Egged on by the proslavery advocate John C. Calhoun, the American South united behind the institution, believing that any attempt to abolish slavery by the federal government was tantamount to being conquered by the North. The industrializing North, on the other hand, believed that slavery was an archaic and outdated institution, which gave the South disproportionate political power.

In the 1850s, the fight over slavery grew more heated. In Bleeding Kansas, proslavery and antislavery settlers committed election fraud and waged guerrilla warfare, while, in the infamous Dred Scott Decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not ban slavery in federal territories. By now, over 4 million people were held in bondage across the country, a sign that slavery was not about to end on its own any time soon. In 1854, the Republican Party was founded on antislavery principles.

Most Republicans were not abolitionists, however, simply preferring to contain slavery and prevent its spread. This nuance was lost in much of the slave-holding South, which equated the election of a 'Black Republican' to the presidency as an end to their peculiar institution and their way of life. So, after Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the US presidential election of 1860, eleven Southern states seceded from the Union and coalesced into the Confederate States of America. The decades-long struggle over slavery had reached its climax, and the guns of the American Civil War began to roar.

The new president, Abraham Lincoln, had never liked slavery. He had spent the earliest part of his life in the slave state of Kentucky, and had seen the horrors of the institution up close. His father, Thomas, chose to attend antislavery churches, and when it came time to move away from Kentucky, he decided to settle his family in Indiana, where slavery did not exist. John L. Scripps, Lincoln's campaign biographer, would later write that poor Whites like Thomas Lincoln detested slavery because it "oppresses the poorer classes, making their poverty and social disrepute a permanent condition" (quoted in Meacham, 15).

As a young man, Lincoln himself spoke against slavery. During his single term in the US Congress, he voted for the Wilmot Proviso, which, had it been successful, would have banned slavery in any of the territories conquered in the Mexican-American War. A well-read and thoughtful man, Lincoln believed that slavery directly contradicted the principles of the Declaration of Independence and made self-government impossible; after all, a country could not claim to be 'self-governing' when some men were owned by other men.

Yet as much as he may have personally disliked slavery, Lincoln was also an ambitious politician who knew the country would never accept its outright abolition. Additionally, he did not think that it was legal, under the US Constitution, for the federal government to force states to give up their slaves. In 1854, in his first major speech on the subject in Peoria, Illinois, he said that "I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not give it up" (quoted in nps.org). Years later, during his first inaugural address on 4 March 1861, he spoke in similar conciliatory terms: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of Slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

This line of thinking reflected the prevailing antislavery feeling of the day – the hope was to appease the Southern states by allowing them to keep slavery, while simultaneously restricting its spread to places where it did not yet exist. That way, the South would one day – hopefully – give up slavery on their own. By the time of his 1861 speech, seven Southern states had already seceded, with eight more on the brink of secession; Lincoln was therefore incentivized to strike a moderating tone, to prevent the Secession Crisis from getting any worse. Still, his moderation enraged the abolitionist wing of his party – known as Radical Republicans – who accused him of being spineless. Frederick Douglass, the famed Black abolitionist, was especially disappointed. He had initially celebrated Lincoln's victory, which he had believed would add an "anti-slavery reputation to the presidency". Now, Douglass expressed his disgust with Lincoln's willingness to grovel "before the foul and withering curse of slavery" (quoted in Goodwin, 331).

It was an impossibly fine line Lincoln had to walk to appease the abolitionists and the moderates within his own party while attempting to mollify the secessionists and the slaveholders still in the Union. Nor did this task grow any easier in the first months of the Civil War. Under the false assumption that there was still a strong pro-Unionist sentiment across the Confederacy, Lincoln still believed the errant Southern states could be induced to return to the fold with minimal fighting, and that the slave-holding border states could be convinced to not secede at all. For this reason, his administration emphasized that the war was being fought simply to preserve the Union, not to eradicate slavery. When one of Lincoln's generals, John C. Frémont, took it upon himself to emancipate the slaves in Missouri without first consulting the administration, the president immediately countermanded the order and fired Frémont.

But as the war dragged on, Lincoln began to realize that the issue of slavery was at the heart of the conflict and would need to be addressed. Thaddeus Stevens, a hardline Radical Republican in Congress, lobbied him to abolish slavery, painting it as a war measure; since the Confederate economy depended on slavery, the Southern war machine would be crippled if slavery were somehow ended there. Additionally, several great European powers like France and the United Kingdom sympathized with the Confederacy and were considering recognizing its independence, if not sending material aid. If Lincoln could redefine the war as a fight against slavery, he might induce these powers to stay neutral and withhold their support from the South. Moreover, by phrasing emancipation as a wartime necessity, Lincoln could do it under the umbrella of his executive wartime powers, thereby avoiding any constitutional issues that might arise.

For these reasons, he gingerly began to take steps against slavery. As early as 1861, his administration approved a policy in which fugitive slaves would not be returned to rebellious states. By the end of the year, Union forces were directed to emancipate Confederate slaves who made it to their lines, under the justification that these slaves were now 'contraband of war.' Within a year, thousands of enslaved people had been freed. Yet Lincoln knew he had to do so much more if he were to redefine the war as a moral crusade, a fight for the souls of "our better angels."

By mid-1862, Lincoln had become convinced of the necessity for the "forcible abolition of slavery" (quoted in McPherson, 503). With the war over a year old and still escalating in scale and destruction, it had become clear to the president that the Southerners were unwilling to compromise on slavery. Why, then, should he? "This government cannot much longer play a game in which it stakes all, and its enemies stake nothing," he wrote. "Those enemies must understand that they cannot experiment for ten years trying to destroy the government, and if they fail still come back into the Union unhurt" (ibid). In other words, the time for conciliation had passed; the South must be forced to reap the consequences of what it had sown.

On 12 July, Lincoln tested the waters by inviting congressmen from the slave-holding – but still loyal – border states to the White House. He asked whether their states would be susceptible to an idea of compensated emancipation, wherein the government would pay slaveholders the full price of their slaves in exchange for their freedom. Two-thirds of the border state delegation rejected this proposal, on the basis that it would produce too "radical change in our social system" and would drive Unionist slaveholders into the arms of the Confederacy (ibid). Disappointed though he may have been by this reaction, Lincoln was undeterred, determined to chart his radical course.

The next day, Lincoln privately spoke with his secretary of state, William H. Seward, and his secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles. Lincoln told them of his intention to issue an emancipation proclamation. The issue of emancipation, he said, had "occupied his mind and thoughts day and night;" after wrestling with these thoughts for weeks, he had reached the conclusion that emancipation was "essential for the preservation of the Union. We must free the slaves or ourselves be subdued" (quoted in McPherson, 504).

For a while after Lincoln had finished speaking, neither Seward nor Welles spoke, each of them in terrified awe of the monumental implications of such a decree. It was not until a week later that Seward advised Lincoln to wait to issue the proclamation until the Union had won a major battlefield victory, lest it appear like a "last measure of our exhausted government…our last shriek, on the retreat" (quoted in Goodwin, 468).

Seward had a point – the last campaign season had been filled with defeat after defeat for Union arms; any proclamation issued while the Union was on its back foot would come off as an unserious, desperate measure. Furthermore, if the administration freed the Southern slaves from a position of weakness, it would invite resistance from Northern 'Copperheads' and Unionist slaveholders; better to wait and do it from a position of strength.

Lincoln agreed to wait until, as Seward grandiosely put it, "the eagle of victory takes flight" (ibid). He would not have to wait long. On 17 September 1862, a Confederate invasion of Maryland was turned back at the bloody Battle of Antietam. Though not a total victory – Union General George B. McClellan had allowed the rebel army to slip through his fingers and retreat to Virginia – it would have to do.

On 22 September, five days after Antietam, Lincoln issued the preliminary emancipation proclamation. In it, he gave the Confederate States one hundred days to lay down their arms and rejoin the Union – if they did not do so by the New Year, then their slaves would be "thenceforward and forever free."

The news sent shockwaves throughout the nation and, indeed, the Western world. Southerners viewed it as vindication of their reasons for secession, that Lincoln and the 'Black Republicans' truly did mean to go after their slaves. Some Radical Republicans believed it did not go far enough, since it only applied to enslaved people in the Confederacy. Yet both arguments missed the point. Lincoln still believed the Constitution did not empower him to end slavery where it existed. But his executive war powers did allow him to seize enemy resources. By framing the proclamation as a wartime measure, he could subvert claims that he was overreaching his power while still striking a blow against slavery.

On 1 January 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation into effect. It applied to ten out of the eleven Confederate States – Tennessee, which by this point had mostly been recaptured by federal troops, was exempt and got to keep its slaves. So too did the loyal border states of Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky, the Unionist counties of West Virginia, and other pockets of the South held by Union forces, like New Orleans; in all, 450,000 people remained legally enslaved throughout the country.

But on the other hand, 3.5 million people were now free – at least, on paper. Lincoln, of course, was unable to enforce the proclamation in the ten states still in active rebellion. However, again, to think that this was Lincoln's intention was to miss the point. By issuing his proclamation, he had reframed the Civil War as a moral crusade against the evil of slavery. As historian James M. McPherson writes, "the Proclamation would turn Union forces into armies of liberation…if they could win the war" (558).

Indeed, the symbolic importance of the Emancipation Proclamation was immense. As Lincoln had hoped, talks that the empires of Britain or France might come to the aid of the Confederates dried up; neither European nation wished to be seen fighting for the cause of slavery. He was also able to garner renewed support from some abolitionists – Frederick Douglass wrote that "We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree," while abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called it an "act of immense historical consequence" (ibid). The proclamation also directly aided the Union war effort. From then until the end of the war, 200,000 Black soldiers would serve in the Union Army, fighting and bleeding and dying for the cause of liberty.

Most significantly, the Emancipation Proclamation marked a shift in Lincoln's own thinking and in the platform of the Republican Party. Previously, Lincoln and other mainstream Republicans had sought a moderate antislavery approach, wishing to appease slave-holding interests by confining slavery to the places where it already existed. By issuing the proclamation, Lincoln was asserting his authority – as well as his intention – to eradicate slavery in the place where it was most prevalent.

The rest of his career – and indeed the rest of his life – would be spent supporting increasingly radical antislavery goals, including the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished chattel slavery entirely, and was passed by Congress in January 1865. Though the Emancipation Proclamation still has its critics in the North – mostly in the form of those who believe it did not go far enough – it was an important leap in the journey toward emancipation, a reckoning with the soul of America, and a chance, as Lincoln would put it, to swell the chorus of Union with the "better angels of our nature" (quoted in Goodwin, 326).