Reading the Emancipation Proclamation (1864)
President Lincoln's Cottage
Thesis
In the midst of a brutal Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation communicated freedom for slaves in Confederate states and a new motivation to fight in the Union. This proclamation strengthened the morale of the Union and changed the very character of the war, accelerating it into a desperate fight for freedom, both for the slaves and for the Confederacy against what they perceived to be a tyrannical Union.