Emancipation Proclamation, proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War, declaring all "slaves within any State, or designated part of a State ... then ... in rebellion, ... shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." The states affected were enumerated in the proclamation; specifically exempted were slaves in parts of the South then held by Union armies. Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation marked a radical change in his policy; historians regard it as one of the great state documents of the United States.
After the outbreak of the Civil War, the slavery issue was made acute by the flight to Union lines of large numbers of slaves who volunteered to fight for their freedom and that of their fellow slaves. In these circumstances, a strict application of established policy would have required return of fugitive slaves to their Confederate masters and would have alienated the staunchest supporters of the Union cause in......
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