Emancipation Proclamation, "Authorized Edition".

Emancipation Proclamation, "Authorized Edition".

THE DOCUMENTS

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Forty-eight copies of this “Authorized Edition” were created in 1864 and sold at the Philadelphia Great Central Sanitary Fair to raise funds for the aid and care of Union troops. This is one of only 26 copies of this edition known to survive.

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. An action taken during the War, it stated that “all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

It was an important step that set the nation on a path towards broader freedoms and enabled later documents that established enduring freedoms for enslaved people more broadly. At the same time, it was a complicated and limited step towards this eventual goal. The Emancipation Proclamation served the dual role of weakening the Confederacy and setting the expectation for the eventual end of slavery in across the United States. It did not address enslavement within Union states, and it would take the end of the war before the promised freedoms in the Confederate states could be fully realized. It is a document that simultaneously seeks strategic and political goals, that navigates a legal and constitutional framework, and that proclaims freedom.

Galveston, Texas was the last Confederate-controlled city to be reached by Union forces and the final city where the proclamation was read and enacted. This milestone, June 19, 1865, is now celebrated as a federal holiday and known as Juneteenth.

[1864]

Emancipation Proclamation, "Authorized Edition". Signed by President Abraham Lincoln; Secretary of State William H. Seward; and John Nicolay, Private Secretary to the President. Washington, D.C., January 1, 1863 [Philadelphia: Frederick Leypoldt for George Henry Boker and Charles Godfrey Leland, 1864].

Section 2: 1833-1859 Formation

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