What 1863 wartime order declared enslaved people in Confederate-held areas to be free?

The Emancipation Proclamation was the 1863 wartime order declaring enslaved people in Confederate-held areas to be free.

President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary proclamation on September 22, 1862, after the Union victory at Antietam. The final proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. It applied to enslaved people in areas then in rebellion against the United States, not to every enslaved person nationwide.

The proclamation changed the Civil War’s stated purpose by linking Union victory with emancipation. It also authorized Black men to serve in the Union Army and Navy. Nearly 200,000 African American soldiers and sailors eventually served the Union during the war.

The proclamation did not itself end slavery everywhere. The 13th Amendment, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States, except as punishment for a crime after conviction.