By Andrea Vale
Stacker News
In many Americans’ recollections, the Emancipation Proclamation was a landmark piece of legislation that officially abolished slavery in the United States. But, like many important historical moments, the truth is more complicated.
Jan. 1, 2024, marks 161 years since the day the Emancipation Proclamation was announced by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. At the time, the Civil War had been raging for three years. Lincoln’s declaration was a watershed moment in the war, which up until then had been formally fought with the central goal of keeping the Confederacy from seceding from the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation changed that, however, and explicitly redirected the struggle toward ending slavery in the United States.
However, the language of the Proclamation was limited in scope. Although it famously declared that “all persons held as slaves … are, and henceforward shall be free,” this didn’t apply to all states and was conditioned on a Union victory in the Civil War. Ending slavery began with the Emancipation Proclamation—but it would be years before former enslaved people gained citizenship, suffrage, and the ability to hold public office.
Stacker used historical records, academic commentary, and political reporting to describe the key events following the Emancipation Proclamation that led to the full abolition of slavery. In reality, the road to freedom was a years-long process of political legislation and cultural shifts; history, however, tends to remember dramatic moments the best, especially those with such moving and empowering language as the Emancipation Proclamation contained.
Though the events covered here end with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the advancement of emancipation continues far beyond this—even more so when one broadens the concept of “freedom” to encompass the larger freedoms of African Americans in general.
For instance, at the same time that formerly enslaved people were first being granted basic rights in society, the Ku Klux Klan emerged in 1865 with the agenda of squashing these efforts. It wasn’t until 1870 that Hiram Revels was elected to the Senate as America’s first Black senator. It took nearly a century after that for the Supreme Court to rule that “separate but equal” schooling policies inherently denied African Americans equal protection under the Constitution.
Read on to discover what it took beyond the Emancipation Proclamation to make formerly enslaved people full, recognized members of the United States.
1863: The Emancipation Proclamation is issued
On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation—but despite popular cultural opinion, it did not actually end slavery in the United States. This was partially because of its limited wording: Though it stated that “all persons held as slaves … are, and henceforward shall be free,” this only applied to states that had seceded from the Union. Loyal states and some members of the Confederacy the Union had captured were exempt.
Perhaps most importantly, the promised freedom of enslaved people was conditional. It would only be granted if the Union won the Civil War, which, at the time of the Proclamation, was in its third year.
The Emancipation Proclamation also stated men of color would be allowed to join the Union army, an invitation they gladly accepted. By the end of the Civil War, nearly 200,000 Black men had fought as soldiers for the Union.
1863: Lincoln meets with Frederick Douglass
Famed freedom champion Frederick Douglass, a formerly enslaved man, had a particular gripe concerning the abolition of slavery: He believed enslaved people could only find full liberation by participating in the Civil War.
After the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, Douglass finally had the go-ahead to begin recruiting the first official regiments of Black soldiers into the Union Army, including his two sons. During the war, many of these soldiers faced torture and reenslavement by the Confederate army. Douglass was so enraged he publicly criticized President Lincoln for neglecting to protect them, resulting in the two meeting at the White House for the first time on Aug. 10, 1863.
The meeting went reasonably well. Though Lincoln couldn’t address Douglass’ grievance on equal pay for Black soldiers, he agreed to sign any commission for Black soldiers the secretary of war recommended.
Douglass was invited to the White House at least three more times by Lincoln and was present at the president’s swearing-in for his second term, during which he publicly declared that slavery was “one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come.”
1863: The Conkling letter
Just a few weeks after meeting with Frederick Douglass, a letter from Lincoln to old friend James C. Conkling was read publicly at a mass meeting of Unionists in Springfield, Illinois. The location was timely and deliberate: Lincoln knew Union Democrats and Republicans were becoming concerningly polarized in Illinois, divided over varying opinions on the cause of the Civil War and the emancipation of enslaved people. The Conkling letter addressed this directly and bluntly, defending the Emancipation Proclamation in no uncertain terms.
In it, Lincoln wrote, “You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.”
Reception to the public reading was enthusiastic and widespread: The entire letter was printed in its entirety in national letters in the days following, and it sparked a rally of over 50,000 in Springfield who met Lincoln’s words with cheers and tears.
1863: The Gettysburg Address
On Nov. 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered a remarkably short but undeniably impactful speech at the cemetery’s dedication at Gettysburg, the site of the deadliest battle of the Civil War. Lincoln’s speech followed the words of famous orator Edward Everett, who spoke for more than two hours beforehand. He later lamented that he failed to have as much impact as Lincoln achieved in just two minutes.
In his speech, Lincoln famously remarked that the “great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion” to ensure “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Though he only referred to slavery opaquely as it fell under the umbrella of ‘freedom,’ the speech still marked the first time he noted the abolition of slavery as a stated goal of the Civil War.
His speech resulted in mixed reviews from papers that both panned and praised this speech. While Republicans (Lincoln’s party) mostly stayed loyal to the president, more radical Democrats felt Lincoln’s words reframed the justification for war, not to keep states from seceding but to free enslaved people.
Just a year after Lincoln publicly delivered the Gettysburg Address, a version of it was published and spread nationally in “Autograph Leaves of Our Country’s Authors.” It is remembered as one of America’s most pivotal speeches.
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