On this day 150 years ago: Emancipation Proclamation takes effect

Lincoln in Grant Park,
Chicago

While today of course is New Year's Day, it's also the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation--which declared slaves held in Confederate territory free. It took two more years of fighting in the Civil War and the
passage of the 13th Amendment before all of the slaves were freed.

The Proclamation, which was announced after the Union victory in the Battle of Antietam, convinced the British and the French not to recognize the Confederacy as an independent nation.

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• Abraham Lincoln birthplace site
• Abraham Lincoln birthplace site's log cabin
• "My earliest recollection is of the Knob Creek place"
• My Mississippi Manifest Destiny: Jonesboro, site of the third Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Technorati tags: on this day culture Civil War history Abraham Lincoln history Americana

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