Abraham Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation WHEREAS On the Twenty second day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty two A Proclamation was issued by the President of the United States containing among other things the following to wit That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three all persons held as slaves within any state or dos gusted part of State the people whereof shell then be in rebellion Rainst the United States shall be then thenceforward and forever free and the executive government of the United States including the military and naval authority thereof will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act of acts to repress such persons or any of them in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom That the executive will on the first day of January aforesaid by proclamation designate the states and parts of States if any in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion at the United States and the fact that any state or the people thereol shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Sl Con Tess of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters I of such state shall have participated shall in the absence of strong countervailing testimony be deemed con clusivo evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States Now therefore I ABRAHAM LINCOLN Prendent of the United States by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States and as a At and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion do on this first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three and in accordance with my purpose Bo to do publicly proclaim for the full period of one hundred days from the day the first above mentioned order and designate as the states and Date of States wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion against the United States the following to wit ARKANSAS TEXAS LOUISIANA except the parishes of st Bernard Pinguemines Jefferson St John St Charles St James Ascension Assumption Terre Bonne Lafourche St Mary St Martin and Orleans including the city of New Orleans MISSISSIPPI ALARAM FLORIDA GEOROTA BOUTH CAROLINA NORTH CAROLINA and VDOINIA except the forty isht counties designated as West Virginia and also the counties of Berkley Accomac Northampton Elizabeth City York Princess Ann and Norfolk including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this Proclamation were not issued And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid I do order and declare that all persons held a slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and henceforward shall be free and that the executive government of the United States including the military and naval authorities thereof will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence unless in necessary self defence and I recommend to them that in all cases when allowed they labor faithfully for resonable wages And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to Arrison forta positions stations and other places and to man vessels of all sorts in maid service And upon this act sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity I invoke the considerate Judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my name and caused the boal of the United States to be fixed Done at the City of Washington this first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred the President ABRAHAM LINCOLN WILLIAM X SEWARD Secretary of State NOTE The rest of the slaves were afterwards freed by Legislation and Constitutional
Chapter 1 THE DEATH OF A PRESIDENT It was early morning on April 15 1865 Americans nervously wondered what would happen to the United States now that President Abraham Lincoln was dead The night before John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln during a play in Washington D C The Civil War had ended only days before The North called the Union fought the South called the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865 After Lincoln was elected president in 1860 several southern states seceded from the Union They decided to become their own country These states were in favor of slavery while Lincoln wanted to limit slavery They feared that Lincoln would not allow them to own slaves Lincoln ordered war to force the southern states to come back to the Union During the war in January 1863 he issued his Emancipation Proclamation This document promised to free the slaves in the Confederacy which made the South fight even harder They knew their loss would mean the end of slavery 5
John Wilkes Booth a famous American stage actor assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D C on April 14 1865 On April 15 1865 the country was at peace but it faced many problems Southern cities were destroyed The states that seceded had to rejoin the United States Northerners did not agree on how this should be done Many people wanted the South to be punished for starting the long and expensive war Finally the end of the war freed millions of slaves in the South as Lincoln had promised Everyone wondered what roles and rights these men and women would have SURRENDER The Civil War ended less than a week before Lincoln was murdered On April 9 1865 General Robert E Lee surrendered his Confederate forces to Union commander Ulysses S Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in central Virginia Though several small battles occurred in the following weeks Lee controlled most of the Confederate troops His surrender in early April ended the major fighting 6
The new role of former slaves in America was a question that troubled both southerners and northerners blacks and whites everyone from politicians to farmers When President Lincoln died on April 15 1865 the questions still had no answers The country wondered how Vice President Andrew Johnson would address the nation’s countless problems when he became president The Civil War ended when General Robert E Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S Grant at Appomattox Courthouse They seemed not to know what was to be their fate since their great benefactor was dead and their hopeless grief affected me more than almost anything else though strong and brave men wept when I met them U S Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles describing a group of former slaves mourning Lincoln’s death Abraham Lincoln led the United States through its greatest constitutional military and moral crisis the American Civil War preserving the Union and abolishing slavery 7
