sep 8, 1862 - Emancipation Proclamation

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Lincoln had used the occasion of the Union victory at Antietam to issue a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all enslaved people in the rebellious states after January 1, 1863.

He justified his decision as a wartime measure, and did not free the enslaved people in the border states loyal to the Union.

Still, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side.

Some 186,000 Black Civil War soldiers would join the Union Army by the time the war ended in 1865.

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