Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a milestone in the America250 era.
The proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War. It declared enslaved people in areas still rebelling against the United States to be free. It did not immediately end slavery everywhere, because it excluded loyal border states and regions already under Union control.
Lincoln had issued a preliminary version on September 22, 1862, after the Union victory at Antietam. That announcement gave Confederate states a deadline to return to the Union before emancipation took effect in rebellious areas.
The proclamation also authorized Black men to join the Union Army and Navy. Nearly 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors served for the Union by the end of the war. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States and completed the legal work the proclamation had begun.