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Introduction

Deliberately dry and legalistic in its language and narrowly drawn so as not to apply to tens of thousands of slaves in loyal states or captured territory, the Emancipation Proclamation now looks very different from the way it appeared when issued. Often discounted and even denounced in our own time, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation caused great jubilation among black Americans in 1863. Frederick Douglass had been a harsh critic of Lincoln, but he greeted the Proclamation as “the greatest event of our nation’s history.”

Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation proclamation
[Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 3 or 4 January 1863]
A 863b

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