Emancipation Proclamation Dbq

Words: 157
Pages: 1

The Emancipation Proclamation, signed on January 1, 1863, wrote that all the slaves in Confederate states would be free. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves, as it exempted border states still in the Union. President Lincoln had made a previous draft of the proclamation, but William H. Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, told him to wait until the Union had a great victory. When the Union won the Battle of Antietam, he decided to deliver a speech saying the Confederacy had 100 days to rejoin the Union or all slaves in the states would be free. The proclamation had little effect on the Confederacy, but it made a crucial change to the goal of the Civil War. Nations such as Britain and France backed off from helping the Confederacy