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Emancipation Proclamation 150th Anniversary

December 28, 2012 | SuzyQ

President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. It declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." Every advance of Union troops into the Confederacy expanded former slaves' freedom. Additionally, the Proclamation allowed black men into the military, and by the end of the Civil War almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had joined and fought for the Union cause.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: the end of slavery in America by Allen C. Guelzo

Abraham Lincoln and the road to emancipation, 1861-1865 by William K. Klingaman

Douglass and Lincoln: how a revolutionary black leader and a reluctant liberator struggled to end slavery and save the Union by Paul Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick

The fiery trial: Abraham Lincoln and American slavery by Eric Foner

Free at last: a documentary history of slavery, freedom, and the Civil War edited by Ira Berlin, et al.

Forever free: the story of emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner