Slavery and Emancipation

How four million people came to be free, and who made it happen

In 1860 nearly four million people in the United States were held as property. Five years later, slavery was against the Constitution. That change did not come from one document or one person. Enslaved people escaped and forced the Union army to decide what to do with them. Congress passed a series of laws. Lincoln issued a proclamation with real limits. Black soldiers fought, and the states ratified an amendment.

This page follows those steps in order. It quotes the documents themselves so you can see exactly what each one said and what it left out.

Slavery in the United States by 1860

The 1860 census counted 3,953,760 enslaved people, about one in eight people in the country. Almost all lived in the fifteen slave states, and in South Carolina and Mississippi they were more than half of the population.

Cotton drove the system. Enslaved people planted, picked and baled the cotton that supplied textile mills in Britain and the North, and cotton was the country’s most valuable export. Taken together, the enslaved were counted as property worth more than all the nation’s railroads and factories combined. Enslavers bought and sold people, separating families, and moved about a million people from the upper South to the cotton states between 1790 and 1860.

The law protected this property. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required federal marshals and ordinary citizens in free states to help return people who had escaped, and denied the accused a jury trial. In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court ruled that Black Americans, free or enslaved, could not be citizens, and that Congress had no power to ban slavery in the western territories.

Resistance and Self-Emancipation

Enslaved people resisted every day: by working slowly, keeping their families and faith together, learning to read where it was forbidden, and running away. Some escaped through the Underground Railroad, a loose network of free Black communities, white abolitionists and others who hid and guided freedom seekers. Harriet Tubman escaped Maryland in 1849 and went back about 13 times, leading about 70 people north.

When the war began, escape became a way to change national policy. In May 1861, three men, Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend, rowed to Fort Monroe, a Union fort in Virginia. General Benjamin Butler refused to return them to their Confederate enslaver, calling them “contraband of war.” Within months thousands more had come to Fort Monroe, and “contrabands” became the army’s word for freedom seekers. By the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of people had freed themselves by reaching Union lines.

Steps to Emancipation

Each step went further than the one before.

Confiscation Acts, 1861 and 1862

The first act (August 6, 1861) let the Union seize enslaved people who were used to help the Confederate war effort. The second (July 17, 1862) declared free those enslaved by people in rebellion who came under Union control.

D.C. Compensated Emancipation, April 16, 1862

Congress ended slavery in the nation’s capital, freeing about 3,100 people. The government paid enslavers up to $300 for each person they had held. The people who had been enslaved received nothing. That June, Congress also banned slavery in the western territories.

Preliminary Proclamation, September 22, 1862

Five days after the Union stopped Lee at Antietam, Lincoln announced that on January 1, 1863, enslaved people in any area still in rebellion would be free. He had waited for a victory so the step would not look desperate.

Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863

Lincoln issued it as commander in chief, as a war measure. It named the states and parts of states in rebellion and declared the people enslaved there free.

What the proclamation did

Made freeing enslaved people an official aim of the Union war effort.
Freed people in Confederate areas as soon as Union troops arrived, and turned the army into an army of liberation.
Opened the army and navy to Black men.
Made it very hard for Britain or France to side with the Confederacy.

What it did not do

It did not apply to the border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri.
It exempted Tennessee and Union-held areas, including West Virginia, parts of Louisiana around New Orleans, and several counties in Virginia.
It could not be enforced where the Confederacy was still in control.
As a war measure, it might have been challenged in court once the war ended. That is one reason a constitutional amendment was needed.

Black Soldiers

From 1863 the War Department organized the United States Colored Troops (USCT). About 180,000 Black men served in the Union army, roughly one in ten Union soldiers, and about 19,000 more served in the navy. These are historians’ estimates based on incomplete records. Most had been enslaved. They fought at Port Hudson, Milliken’s Bend, Fort Wagner, Nashville and Petersburg, among other battles. They were paid less than white soldiers until Congress equalized pay in 1864, and Confederate forces sometimes killed Black soldiers who tried to surrender, as at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864. In his 1864 letter to Albert Hodges, Lincoln counted “a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers” from emancipation.

Juneteenth and the 13th Amendment

Juneteenth. Texas was far from the main armies, and slavery continued there after Lee’s surrender. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order No. 3, announcing that all enslaved people in Texas were free. Freed Texans began celebrating the day the next year. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.

The 13th Amendment. Lincoln and the Republicans wanted to end slavery permanently and everywhere. The Senate passed the amendment in April 1864, and after a hard fight the House passed it on January 31, 1865, by 119 to 56. Ratification by three-fourths of the states was complete on December 6, 1865. That day slavery ended in Kentucky and Delaware, the last two states where it was still legal. Secretary of State William Seward certified the amendment on December 18, 1865.

The punishment clause. The amendment bans slavery and involuntary servitude “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Within months, Southern states passed Black Codes that made it a crime to be unemployed or to “loiter,” arrested Black men under these laws, and leased prisoners to planters and companies to work. This system is called convict leasing. Historians and some lawmakers still debate the clause today.

What Freedom Meant

For freed people, freedom meant things that had been denied to them: keeping families together and finding relatives who had been sold away, legal marriage, choosing where to live and work, getting paid, starting schools and churches, and owning land. Many took new last names. Whether the nation would protect these rights, and whether freed people would be citizens and voters, was the question of the next twelve years.

Continue with Reconstruction →

Timeline, 1850 to 1865

Click or tap (or Tab to) an event and press Enter to open it. Use the buttons to show only one kind of event.

Dot colors: law or order freedom and resistance war and soldiers

1850 Fugitive Slave Act law or order
Part of the Compromise of 1850. Federal officials must help capture people who escaped slavery, and people accused have no right to a jury trial (September 18).
1850s Tubman’s rescues freedom and resistance
After escaping in 1849, Harriet Tubman returns to Maryland about 13 times and guides about 70 people to freedom, by the National Park Service’s count.
1857 Dred Scott decision law or order
The Supreme Court rules that Black Americans cannot be U.S. citizens and that Congress cannot ban slavery in the territories (March 6).
1860 Census counts the enslaved law or order
The census counts 3,953,760 enslaved people, nearly 4 million, in fifteen states.
1861 War begins war and soldiers
Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter (April 12).
1861 “Contrabands” at Fort Monroe freedom and resistance
Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend escape to Fort Monroe, Virginia. General Benjamin Butler refuses to return them, calling them “contraband of war” (May).
1861 First Confiscation Act law or order
Congress allows the seizure of enslaved people used to aid the Confederate war effort (August 6).
1862 Slavery ended in Washington, D.C. law or order
The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act frees about 3,100 people and pays enslavers up to $300 per person (April 16).
1862 Robert Smalls takes the Planter freedom and resistance
Smalls and other enslaved crew members sail a Confederate ship out of Charleston and hand it to the U.S. Navy (May 13).
1862 Second Confiscation Act and Militia Act law or order
People enslaved by those in rebellion who reach Union lines are declared free, and the president may enlist Black men (July 17).
1862 Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation law or order
Five days after Antietam, Lincoln warns that enslaved people in areas still in rebellion on January 1 will be free (September 22).
1863 Emancipation Proclamation law or order
Takes effect January 1. It frees people in Confederate-held areas and opens the army and navy to Black men.
1863 Bureau of Colored Troops war and soldiers
The War Department creates a bureau to organize the United States Colored Troops (May 22).
1863 Combahee River Raid freedom and resistance
Tubman helps guide Union gunboats in South Carolina in a raid that frees more than 700 people (June 1–2).
1863 Fort Wagner war and soldiers
The 54th Massachusetts leads the assault near Charleston (July 18).
1865 13th Amendment passes Congress law or order
The House approves it 119 to 56, sending it to the states (January 31).
1865 Lee surrenders war and soldiers
At Appomattox Court House, Virginia (April 9).
1865 Juneteenth freedom and resistance
In Galveston, Texas, General Gordon Granger reads General Order No. 3, announcing that all enslaved people are free (June 19).
1865 13th Amendment ratified law or order
Georgia becomes the 27th state to ratify, making slavery illegal everywhere in the United States, including Kentucky and Delaware (December 6).

Primary Sources

5 short excerpts from public-domain documents, checked against the texts at the National Archives and other archives listed below. Ellipses (…) mark skipped text.

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free …”

Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863 (repeating the words of the preliminary proclamation of September 22, 1862)

Notice the limit built into the sentence: freedom applies only where people were “in rebellion.” The proclamation then lists those areas by name and leaves the exempted parts “precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.”

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Section 1. Passed by Congress January 31, 1865; ratified December 6, 1865

Unlike the proclamation, this applied everywhere and could not be undone by a later president. Read the middle clause closely: it allows forced labor as punishment for a crime.

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”

Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”, speech at Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852

Douglass spoke to a white antislavery audience the day after the national holiday. He praised the founders’ ideals and then asked how a nation could celebrate liberty while holding millions in slavery.

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”

General Order No. 3, issued by Major General Gordon Granger at Galveston, Texas, June 19, 1865

The proclamation was two and a half years old, but Union troops had not yet reached most of Texas. The order went on to say that freed people should “remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.” Ask what kind of freedom that described.

“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.”

Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864

In the same letter Lincoln explained that he believed his oath let him act against slavery only when it became necessary to save the Union. Compare that with his letter to Horace Greeley on the Leaders page.

Key Terms

Enslaved person: A person held as property by law. Historians use this phrase, rather than “slave,” to put the person first and make clear that slavery was done to them.
Self-emancipation: Freeing oneself, for example by escaping to free states or to Union lines. Hundreds of thousands of people freed themselves this way during the war.
Underground Railroad: Networks of people, Black and white, who helped freedom seekers escape. It was not a real railroad and was not one organized group.
Contraband: The Union army’s early word for enslaved people who escaped to its lines, from “contraband of war,” meaning enemy property that could be seized.
Compensated emancipation: Ending slavery by paying enslavers for the people they had held. Enslaved people themselves received nothing.
Border states: Slave states that stayed in the Union: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, and West Virginia from 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to them.
United States Colored Troops (USCT): Black regiments organized by the federal government from 1863.
Juneteenth: June 19, the anniversary of General Order No. 3 in Galveston in 1865. It became a federal holiday in 2021.
Punishment clause: The part of the 13th Amendment that allows involuntary servitude “as a punishment for crime.”

Discussion Questions

The Emancipation Proclamation did not free anyone in the border states. Why did Lincoln write it that way? Was it still a turning point? Use the text to support your answer.
Who freed the enslaved? Make the case for each of these answers: Lincoln, Congress, the Union army, and enslaved people themselves.
Douglass gave his Fourth of July speech in 1852. If he had given it again in 1865, what might he have changed, and what might he have kept?
General Order No. 3 told freed people to “work for wages” and stay where they were. What did freedom need to include beyond the end of ownership?
Why do you think Congress kept the punishment clause in the 13th Amendment? How did Southern states use it after 1865?

Test Yourself

10 questions on slavery and emancipation. Click an answer to check it.

The Road to Freedom

Sources and Further Reading

Primary sources quoted

Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863. National Archives, transcript.
13th Amendment, Section 1. National Archives, 13th Amendment.
Frederick Douglass, Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, July 5th, 1852 (Rochester, 1852). Text in the Frederick Douglass Papers digital edition.
General Order No. 3, June 19, 1865. National Archives, Juneteenth original document.
Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864. In Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7 (1953), 281–283; original in the Library of Congress, Abraham Lincoln Papers.

Interpretation

Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010).
Ira Berlin and others, Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (1992).
Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth (2021).
David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018).