The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, declaring enslaved people free in areas of the Confederacy in rebellion.
President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary proclamation on September 22, 1862, after the Union victory at Antietam. The final proclamation named the areas still in rebellion and excluded loyal slave states and certain Union-controlled regions.
The order changed the purpose and international meaning of the Civil War. It authorized the enlistment of Black men in the Union Army and Navy, and nearly 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors eventually served the Union cause. It also discouraged European governments from supporting the Confederacy.
The proclamation did not itself abolish slavery everywhere in the United States. Its legal basis rested on Lincoln’s wartime authority, and the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery throughout the country. The proclamation’s reach was therefore powerful but limited by its military scope.