X-Nico

10 unusual facts about Emancipation Proclamation


Charles Farrar Browne

Before presenting "The Emancipation Proclamation" to his Cabinet, Lincoln read to them the latest episode, "Outrage in Utiky", also known as High-Handed Outrage at Utica.

Clarence Benjamin Jones

In summing up his sentiments on King’s life, Jones remarked in a 2007 interview: “Except for Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Martin Luther King, Jr., in 12 years and 4 months from 1956 to 1968, did more to achieve political, economic, and social justice in America than any other event or person in the previous 400 years” (Jones, 18 May 2007).

Douglas A. Blackmon

He revealed the stories of tens of thousands of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude, which lasted into the 20th century.

Edict of Emancipation

The Emancipation Proclamation, an 1863 directive by President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War

Matthew Gaines

After the 1863 emancipation was finally officially announced in Texas on June 19, 1865, Gaines settled in Washington County, where he established himself as a leader of the freedmen, both as a Baptist preacher and a politician.

Millie and Christine McKoy

On 1 January 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation ended their slave status and they were no longer anyone's property.

Richard Carwardine

His best known work is the 2004 book Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, a political biography which particularly focuses on how Abraham Lincoln mobilised evangelical Protestants to gain support for the Union and emancipation; this book won the Lincoln Prize.

Selena Cuffe

A descendant of the Ashanti tribe of Ghana, he was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation at the age of eight.

W. D. Wright

Wright's great grandmother, Elizabeth Downey, was a slave until the age of 12 in Virginia, when she was emancipated under the Emancipation Proclamation in approximately 1863.

We Insist!

It contains a suite which composer and drummer Max Roach and lyricist Oscar Brown had begun to develop in 1959, with a view to its performance in 1963 on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.


John G. Foster

After President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in rebel territory, in April 1863 Foster appointed Horace James, an experienced Congregational chaplain, as ”Superintendent of Negro Affairs for the North Carolina District.

President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldiers' Home

The historic Cottage, built in the Gothic revival style, was constructed from 1842 to 1843 as the home of George Washington Riggs, who went on to establish the Riggs National Bank in Washington, D.C. Lincoln lived in the cottage June to November 1862 through 1864 and during the first summer living there, Lincoln drafted the preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

William Weston Patton

Patton took an earnest part in the anti-slavery movement, and was chairman of the committee that presented to President Lincoln, 13 September 1862, the memorial from Chicago asking him to issue a proclamation of emancipation.