THE
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
By Abraham
Lincoln
A PROCLAMATION
Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a
proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing,
among other things, the following, to wit:
"That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons
held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people
whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then,
thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United
States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and
maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such
persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
"That the executive will on the 1st day of January
aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any,
in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against
the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on
that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by
members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters
of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong
countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the
people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States."
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United
States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army
and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the
authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war
measure for supressing said rebellion, do, on this
1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do,
publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day
above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein
the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United
States the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St.
Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St.
Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone,
Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New
Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North
Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West
Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac,
Morthhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne,
and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which
excepted parts are for the present left
precisely as if this proclamation were not
issued.
And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I
do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated
States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the
Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval
authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free
to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence;
and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully
for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known that such persons of
suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of
justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the
considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are
met on a great battle field of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting
place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we
should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not
consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground.
The brave men living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it,
far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it
will never forget what they did here. It
is for this the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
the great task remaining before us -- that from thse
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.”