On this day in 1862, in the second year of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln told his Cabinet that he planned to issue a proclamation freeing slaves. Lincoln said, however, that he would ...

So why are African Americans free today? Because of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which Lincoln, especially, knew was essential for the permanent abolition of slavery. Friday ...

Virginia Newman claimed Lincoln came through Jasper County, Texas, in a large carriage. He shook Newman's hand and called on the white population to free their slaves. “Some folks say dat ain’ ...

It stated that if Southern states did not surrender by Jan. 1, 1863, the president would issue a final order to make their slaves “forever free.” The fighting continued. Some doubted Lincoln ...

Rather, it declared free only those slaves living in states not under Union control. William Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state, commented, "We show our symapthy with slavery by emancipating ...

Slavery, Lincoln said, “deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites.” ...

"All persons held as slaves within any State or designated ... thenceforward, and forever free," Lincoln announced. The "Great Emancipator" claimed controversial war powers in making the proclamation.

Though "contraband" slaves had been declared free, Lincoln continued to insist that this was a war to save the Union, not to free slaves. But by 1862, Lincoln was considering emancipation as a ...

Juneteenth is a federal holiday that commemorates the emancipation of slaves in Galveston, Texas. It was officially signed ...

American schoolchildren are taught that the slaves in confederate states were freed when Abraham Lincoln issued the ... the reality of actually freeing those slaves was far more complicated.

“It was published in the Tazewell Express, which was a free shopper mailed ... ‘This was the home of a slave girl named Nance, first slave freed by Abraham Lincoln in 1841,’ and I’m ...