📰 TODAY IN HISTORY 📰

January 1st, 1863
Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. Attempting to stitch together a nation mired in a bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln made a last-ditch, but carefully calculated, decision regarding the institution of slavery in America.
When Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, critics claimed that it accomplished nothing. Despite the fact that it freed enslaved people in most Union-controlled southern areas and completely changed the focus of the war, critics of the measure railed against it.
Frederick Douglass saw the effect it had on politics: “The change in attitude of the Government is vast and startling…we can scarcely conceive of a more complete revolution in the position of a nation. It will stand with every distinguished event which marks any advance made by mankind from the thraldom and darkness of error to the glorious liberty of truth.”