January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamationon. The proclamation said, "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free" and "that all persons held as slaves are, and henceforward shall be free." The Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways even though the expansion of wording. It applied only to states that had removed themselves from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy the Southern secessionist states that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Unions military victory. Although the Emancipation Proclamation …show more content…
The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom. The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off. The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United