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Emancipation Proclamation Essay

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The Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. This one proclamation changed the federal legal status of about than 3 million enslaved people. In the designated areas of the South from the cages of slavery to the gates of freedom. It had an effect that as soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through the help of federal troops, the slave will become legally free. Eventually it reached and freed all of the designated slaves. It was issued as a war tactic during the American Civil War. It was directed to all the areas in rebellion and all segments of the executive branch of the United States. It proclaimed …show more content…

The Emancipation Proclamation also ordered that suitable people among those freed could now be enrolled into paid service of United States ' forces, and ordered the Union Army to "recognize and maintain the freedom of" the former slaves. The Proclamation did not compensate the owners in any way, did not make slavery illegal and did not grant any citizenship to the former slaves. It only made the eradication of slavery an explicit war goal as an addition to the goal of reuniting the Union. Around 20,000 to 50,000 slaves in the southern regions where the rebellion already had been subdued were immediately emancipated. The proclamation could not be enforced in the areas still under rebellion, but when the Union Army took control of Confederate regions, The Proclamation provided the legal support framework for freeing about more than 3 million slaves in those southern regions. Prior to the Proclamation, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which suggested that escaped slaves were either returned back to their prior masters or held in camps, contraband for their later return. The Proclamation applied only to the slaves in Confederate held lands and thus it did not apply to those in the four slave states in the south that were not in rebellion, nor and lower Louisiana, and excluded those counties of Virginia that were soon to form the state of West

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