Emancipation Proclamation [General Orders, No. 1. The following proclamation by the President is published for the information and government of the Army and all concerned (Washington, D.C., 1863)].
Lincoln was not an active abolitionist, but he recognized the necessity of ending slavery and its benefit to the Union in the Civil War. With the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln in 1863 made good on an earlier threat, issuing a wartime order that in time freed four million people. After the war, Reconstruction saw the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, including due process protections and voting rights for Black Americans. Yet even before Reconstruction ended in 1877, local and federal courts began to narrow and invalidate the application of the “Reconstruction Amendments” and the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875.
