50 Fun Facts About Emancipation Proclamation

On what date did the final Emancipation Proclamation take effect?

Officially it is Proclamation 95, a presidential proclamation and executive order issued in the middle of the Civil War.

Roughly how many days separated the Preliminary Proclamation from the final one?

The preliminary order of September 1862 warned that slaves in any state still in rebellion at the new year would be declared free.

Roughly how many enslaved people had their legal status changed by the Emancipation Proclamation?

That was most of the roughly 4 million enslaved people in the country; the border states and some Union-held areas were left out.

The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to states in rebellion; how many states did it name?

Eleven states had seceded, but one already under a Union military government was left off the list.

Which seceded state was left out of the Emancipation Proclamation because a Union government ran it from Nashville?

The state adopted its own constitutional amendment banning slavery in early 1865, before the federal abolition amendment was ratified.

Which of these was one of the four border slave states left untouched by the Proclamation?

Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware had not seceded, so Lincoln's war powers gave him no authority over slavery there.

About how many enslaved people in the border states were left out of the Proclamation?

Exemptions for Union-held parts of Virginia and Louisiana left another 300,000 people unemancipated.

Which Louisiana city, deemed loyal, was exempted from the Proclamation with 13 nearby parishes?

Forty-eight Virginia counties about to become West Virginia were also carved out of the order.

Under what constitutional authority did Lincoln say he was issuing the Proclamation?

He called it 'a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion', which is why it could not reach loyal slave states.

Which battle gave Lincoln the Union victory he wanted before announcing the Preliminary Proclamation?

He called his cabinet together five days after the fighting in Maryland and issued the preliminary order.

The Maryland battle that preceded the Preliminary Proclamation holds what grim distinction?

Some 22,726 men were killed, wounded or missing; Lincoln, unhappy with McClellan's failure to pursue Lee, sacked him in November.

Who advised Lincoln to delay the Proclamation until a victory so it would not look like a 'last shriek of retreat'?

The Secretary of State was reportedly speechless when Lincoln first read him the draft in July 1862.

Which newspaper editor's 1862 piece 'The Prayer of Twenty Millions' demanded faster emancipation?

Lincoln's public reply insisted the war was about the Union, though he had already drafted the Proclamation in secret.

In his August 1862 reply to a New York editor, what did Lincoln call his 'paramount object' in the war?

He added that he would do it by freeing all the slaves, none of them, or some of them, whichever worked.

Which Union general declared escaped slaves 'contraband of war' in May 1861 and refused to return them?

He told the owner's agent he had no constitutional obligations to 'a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be'.

The Second Confiscation Act of July 1862 declared 'forever free' the enslaved people belonging to whom?

Lincoln maintained that Congress could not free slaves in rebel states, but that he as commander in chief could do so as a military measure.

Besides freeing slaves, what did the Proclamation newly allow former slaves to do?

Tens of thousands of formerly enslaved men took up the offer and served in the Union Army.

Roughly how many black men joined the Union Army during the Civil War?

Grant wrote that arming and freeing them was 'the heavyest blow yet given the Confederacy'.

How did the Confederacy respond in May 1863 to the Union's use of black soldiers?

The statute demanded 'full and ample retaliation' and treated slave insurrection as a capital offence.

Which Confederate general called the Emancipation Proclamation a 'savage and brutal policy'?

Some Confederates actually welcomed the order, hoping it would drive more white Southerners to enlist.

Which abolitionist called the Proclamation 'the greatest event of our nation's history' at Cooper Union in 1863?

He later delivered the keynote at the 1876 dedication of the Emancipation Memorial, where he described Lincoln's legacy as complex.

On New Year's Eve 1862, African Americans gathered for what became known as which ceremonies?

Also called 'Freedom's Eve', the gatherings looked toward midnight, when the Proclamation was due to take effect.

Which founder of Methodism brought the New Year's Eve church tradition behind 'Freedom's Eve' to England?

He picked it up from the Moravian Brethren who arrived in England in the 1730s.

Roughly how many people were immediately freed by the Proclamation in areas the U.S. Army already held?

Freedom then spread as Union troops advanced, from Winchester, Virginia, to Key West and the Sea Islands.

What effect did the Proclamation have on the chances of Britain and France recognising the Confederacy?

Combined with the failed Southern offensive into Maryland, it removed any practical chance of foreign military intervention.

Workers from which English city wrote to Lincoln to 'joyfully honor' the Proclamation despite the cotton famine?

Mayor Abel Haywood's letter praised Lincoln for living up to the words 'All men are created free and equal'.

Which phrase in the Gettysburg Address indirectly referred to the Proclamation and ending slavery as a war aim?

Lincoln spoke at the cemetery dedication on November 19, 1863, ten months after the Proclamation took effect.

Which amendment permanently abolished slavery throughout the United States?

It bans slavery and involuntary servitude 'except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted'.

The House of Representatives passed the abolition amendment on January 31, 1865, by what vote?

It narrowly cleared the two-thirds threshold after one failed vote and intense lobbying by the Lincoln administration.

Which state's ratification on December 6, 1865, gave the abolition amendment the 27 states it needed?

Illinois had been first, on February 1, 1865; Secretary of State Seward certified the amendment on December 18.

Which state did not ratify the abolition amendment until 1995, with the paperwork certified only in 2013?

That finally made it ratified by every state that had existed in 1865.

Which two border states kept slavery legal until the abolition amendment took effect in 1865?

Maryland, Missouri and West Virginia had all abolished slavery on their own before the war ended.

Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when emancipation was finally enforced in which state?

The order read out in Galveston came 900 days after the Proclamation had taken effect.

Which Union general arrived at Galveston on June 19, 1865, to enforce emancipation?

He took command of more than 2,000 federal troops and voided every law the Confederate legislature had passed during the war.

Juneteenth became a U.S. federal holiday in which year?

It was the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Nine months before the Proclamation, Lincoln signed a law ending slavery where, with compensation for loyal owners?

It set aside $1 million to pay owners, the only compensated emancipation plan ever enacted in the U.S., and April 16 is still Emancipation Day in the city.

On June 19, 1862, Lincoln signed a law prohibiting slavery where?

The ban covered current and future territories but not the states themselves.

Carpenter's 1864 painting of the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation hangs where?

Carpenter lived in the White House for months while he worked, using the State Dining Room as a studio.

Carpenter set his painting in the White House office where the first reading took place. What is it called today?

Lincoln's office doubled as the Cabinet Room; he personally showed the artist where each man had sat.

Whose $5 gift began the drive that funded the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park?

She gave her first earnings in freedom on the day she heard of Lincoln's death; the statue was erected in 1876.

The kneeling freedman on the Emancipation Memorial was modelled on which man?

His life story had been popularised in a biography by William Greenleaf Eliot; the sculptor Thomas Ball re-carved the face to match.

With which words did Martin Luther King Jr. open his 1963 'I Have a Dream' speech?

He spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, 'in whose symbolic shadow we stand'.

Which president invoked the Proclamation's centennial in a June 1963 address calling civil rights 'a moral issue'?

He announced a comprehensive civil rights bill a week later and pushed for it until his assassination that November.

Who designed the 1963 US commemorative stamp for the Emancipation Proclamation's centennial?

An initial printing of 120 million stamps was authorised, timed to the opening of the Century of Negro Progress Exhibition in Chicago.

Which vice president tied the Emancipation Proclamation's centennial to civil rights at Gettysburg in May 1963?

'One hundred years ago, the slave was freed,' he said, before insisting that the promise was still unfulfilled.

What was the effect of the Proclamation on the price of slaves inside the Confederacy?

One South Carolinian was still advising in 1865 that 'now is the time for Uncle to buy some negro women and children'.

Which two 1862 statutes did the Preliminary Proclamation direct 'attention' to?

The final Proclamation cited no statute at all, resting entirely on Lincoln's authority as president and commander-in-chief.

Besides Seward, which cabinet member first heard Lincoln read his draft proclamation on July 13, 1862?

Both men were at first speechless; the Navy Secretary apparently said nothing at all.

What controversial step did Lincoln take two days after issuing the Preliminary Proclamation?

Opponents linked the two actions to claim he was becoming a despot, and Democrats gained 28 House seats that autumn.

Which 1857 Supreme Court opinion was effectively repudiated by the June 1862 law banning slavery in the territories?

The court had held that Congress was powerless to regulate slavery in US territories.