What was the official number of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation?

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was officially designated Proclamation 95.

Lincoln issued the final proclamation on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War. It declared enslaved people in areas still in rebellion against the United States to be free. The measure applied to the Confederate states and excluded loyal slave states and certain areas already under Union control.

The proclamation changed the legal and military character of the war. It authorized formerly enslaved men to join the Union armed forces, and nearly 200,000 Black men eventually served in the Union Army and Navy. It also made abolition an explicit Union war aim and discouraged European governments from recognizing the Confederacy.

The proclamation did not immediately end slavery everywhere in the United States. Its wartime authority was limited, and slavery remained legal in excluded areas until constitutional abolition. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery throughout the country.