50 Fun Facts About Emancipation Proclamation

The final Emancipation Proclamation took effect on which holiday?

New Year's Day, 1863: Lincoln signed it that afternoon, a hundred days after his warning to the rebel states, and the text began going out over the telegraph wires that evening.

Lincoln gave rebel states 100 days' notice to do what?

Rejoin the Union: Lincoln later wrote that the states could have turned the order aside 'by simply again becoming good citizens of the United States'. Not one of them did.

Which writer marked the Proclamation's 50th anniversary with the poem 'Fifty Years' in The New York Times?

James Weldon Johnson, author of 'Lift Every Voice and Sing', wrote it as U.S. consul in Corinto, Nicaragua, where a rebellion against the president ended with American troops coming ashore in 1912.

Why did Lincoln's arm tremble as he went to sign the final Proclamation?

Hours of shaking hands at a White House reception had left his arm almost paralysed, and he feared a shaky signature would look like doubt. 'My whole soul is in it,' he said, and signed firmly.

Which seceded state did the Proclamation omit because a Union military government ran it?

Tennessee was omitted; a Union military governor had run it from Nashville since 1862, and the state abolished slavery by its own amendment in February 1865.

Which poet read his new 'Boston Hymn' to a packed Music Hall on the day the Proclamation took effect?

Ralph Waldo Emerson read it at the Music Hall; one stanza turns compensation around, saying the ransom belongs not to the master but to the slave, who 'is owner, and ever was'.

Why did the Proclamation free no one in Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri or Delaware?

They never seceded, so an order aimed at states in rebellion passed them by; slavery stayed legal in two of the four until the abolition amendment took effect.

Which Union-held Louisiana city did the Proclamation exempt, along with a dozen nearby parishes?

New Orleans had been in Union hands since spring 1862, so Lincoln treated it and the parishes around it as no longer in rebellion; the 48 counties becoming West Virginia were exempted too.

On what authority did Lincoln say he was issuing the Proclamation?

As Commander-in-Chief in wartime, Lincoln called the order 'a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion'. Because that footing would end with the war, he then pressed for an amendment.

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

Antietam halted Lee's advance on September 17, 1862. Lincoln told his cabinet he had vowed to issue the order if Lee was driven back, and he did so five days after the battle.

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

Bloodiest single day in American history: some 22,700 men were killed, wounded or missing near Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862, yet Lee's retreat gave Lincoln the victory he had been waiting for.

By Lincoln's account, which cabinet member urged delay so the Proclamation would not seem 'our last shriek, on the retreat'?

William Seward, the Secretary of State, spoke up when Lincoln read his draft to the cabinet on July 22, 1862; Lincoln said he had entirely overlooked the point and put the paper aside to wait for a victory.

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

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, published the open letter on August 20, 1862; Lincoln 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?

'My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union,' Lincoln wrote on August 22, 1862, adding he would free all, some or none of the slaves to do it.

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

Benjamin Butler, commanding Fort Monroe, reasoned that Virginia's secession freed him from the Fugitive Slave Act, so he kept three escaped men as 'contraband of war' and put them to work at the fort.

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

It freed the slaves of anyone engaged in rebellion once they reached Union lines. Lincoln signed it on July 17, 1862, and five days later showed his cabinet a first draft of the Proclamation.

Which black regiment, raised weeks after the Proclamation opened the army to black men, is the subject of the film Glory?

The 54th Massachusetts began recruiting within weeks of the Proclamation, and in July 1863 it spearheaded the failed assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, that the film dramatizes.

Roughly how many black men served in the Union army and navy during the Civil War?

About 200,000: some 179,000 black soldiers, a tenth of the Union Army, and 19,000 sailors served, and nearly 40,000 of them died, most from disease rather than battle.

What did the Confederate Congress threaten in 1863 for black Union soldiers taken prisoner?

Enslavement or execution: the law treated captured black soldiers as slaves in revolt, a capital crime, and Lincoln answered by threatening reprisals against Confederate prisoners.

Which Confederate general, days after the Proclamation, condemned the 'savage and brutal policy' the enemy 'proclaimed'?

Robert E. Lee wrote it to the Confederate war secretary; most historians take the 'policy' to be the Proclamation, which he said left 'no alternative but success or degradation worse than death'.

Which abolitionist urged black men to enlist once the Proclamation allowed it, and saw two of his own sons join up?

Frederick Douglass argued that a black man who had worn the country's uniform could never be denied citizenship, and two of his sons were among the first recruits to the regiment he helped raise.

On the eve of the Proclamation, African Americans gathered in churches for what became known as which services?

Watch Night services drew free and enslaved worshippers to pray until the stroke of midnight, when the Proclamation took effect, and Black congregations still hold them every year.

Lincoln gave his handwritten final draft of the Proclamation to a soldiers' charity fair; which disaster later destroyed it?

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed it: Lincoln had given the manuscript to a Chicago fair raising money for soldiers in 1863, and only photographs of it survive.

The Proclamation urged freed people to avoid violence except in self-defence and to do what 'faithfully'?

Labor for reasonable wages: Lincoln 'recommended' that the freed 'labor faithfully for reasonable wages', and the very next paragraph opened the armed services to them.

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

It effectively ended them: once abolition was a Union war aim, backing the South meant backing slavery, and public opinion in Britain, where many already opposed slavery, turned against intervention.

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

Manchester's cotton workers backed the Union at a Free Trade Hall meeting, and Lincoln's reply praised their 'sublime Christian heroism', words now carved on the pedestal of his statue in the city's Lincoln Square.

Which Gettysburg Address phrase is widely read as pointing to the end of slavery?

'A new birth of freedom': the speech never names slavery or the Proclamation, so this phrase from its last sentence is where readers find emancipation in it.

Which amendment permanently abolished slavery throughout the United States?

The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865, bans slavery and involuntary servitude 'except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted'.

The House passed the abolition amendment 119 to 56 in January 1865, narrowly clearing which required threshold?

Two-thirds of the House had to agree, which meant 117 of the 175 votes cast, so the amendment passed with two to spare after failing there in 1864 and being pressed hard by Lincoln.

Which former Confederate state's ratification in December 1865 gave the abolition amendment the three-quarters of states it needed?

Georgia ratified on December 6, 1865, so a state that had seceded to protect slavery supplied the 27th and deciding approval, three-quarters of the 36 states.

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

Mississippi's legislature voted to ratify in 1995 but never sent the paperwork; it was filed with the Federal Register in 2013, completing ratification by every state of 1865.

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

Delaware and Kentucky alone kept slavery legal until the amendment took effect in December 1865; Maryland, Missouri and West Virginia had abolished it on their own earlier.

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

Texas held about 250,000 enslaved people, and a Union general's order read out at Galveston reached them two and a half years after the Proclamation took effect.

Which Union general's General Order No. 3, issued on June 19, 1865, announced that 'all slaves are free'?

Gordon Granger's order declared 'an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves', and the celebrations it set off became an annual holiday.

Which president signed Juneteenth into law as a federal holiday?

Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on June 17, 2021, and because the 19th fell on a Saturday, federal workers had their first Juneteenth off the very next day.

In April 1862, Lincoln signed a law ending slavery where, with compensation for loyal owners?

Washington, D.C.: the act of April 16, 1862, freed about 3,000 people and paid loyal owners up to $300 each, and the city now marks the date as Emancipation Day, a public holiday.

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

All U.S. territories, present and future, though not the states: Congress flatly contradicted the Supreme Court, which had ruled five years earlier that it had no power to keep slavery out of them.

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

The painting hangs in the U.S. Capitol, over the Senate's west staircase, after Elizabeth Thompson bought it and gave it to Congress in 1878; Carpenter had painted it in the White House's State Dining Room.

The White House room now called the Lincoln Bedroom served what purpose during Lincoln's presidency?

His office and Cabinet Room: he first read the Proclamation to his cabinet there, and the Lincoln-era bed and furniture arrived only in 1945, when Truman had them moved in.

The fund for the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park began with a $5 gift from whom?

A formerly enslaved woman, Charlotte Scott, gave five dollars on hearing of Lincoln's death, and a campaign among freed people went on to pay for the statue unveiled in 1876.

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

Archer Alexander fled slavery in Missouri in 1863 after warning Union troops of a plot against them, so the kneeling figure wears the face of a real man who had seized his own freedom.

Which phrase in King's 1963 'I Have a Dream' speech recalls the Emancipation Proclamation's signing?

'Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation,' King said from the Lincoln Memorial steps on August 28, 1963.

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

John F. Kennedy's televised address of June 11, 1963, said 'one hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves'; he sent Congress a civil rights bill on June 19.

What image did Georg Olden put on the Proclamation's 1963 centennial stamp?

A broken chain was his simple design: Olden, the first African American to design a U.S. stamp, was at the White House when the president unveiled it.

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

Lyndon Johnson told the Memorial Day crowd on May 30, 1963, that 'the Negro today asks justice', and that until justice is blind to color, 'emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact'.

Which Union general's August 1861 order freeing Missouri rebels' slaves did Lincoln revoke?

John C. Frémont proclaimed the slaves of Missouri rebels free on August 30, 1861; Lincoln, fearing the loss of the border states, ordered it modified and soon removed him.

The Preliminary Proclamation quoted a March 1862 article of war that barred Union officers from doing what?

Returning fugitive slaves could get an officer dismissed from the service under the article of March 13, 1862; Lincoln quoted it in full that September, yet the final Proclamation cited no statute at all.

Lincoln raised his emancipation plan during a July 1862 carriage ride with which Navy Secretary?

Gideon Welles and the Secretary of State shared Lincoln's carriage on July 13, 1862, the day Stanton's infant son was buried, and Welles recalled that neither felt ready to offer an opinion.

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

Suspending habeas corpus: his proclamation of September 24, 1862, put anyone discouraging enlistment or resisting the draft under martial law, so they could be jailed without trial.

Which 1857 Supreme Court opinion, denying Congress any power over slavery's spread, did a wartime law of June 1862 repudiate?

Dred Scott v. Sandford also held that black Americans could not be citizens; a constitutional amendment overturned that in 1868 by making everyone born in the United States a citizen.