Oil painting of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the U.S. (1861–1865)
President Lincoln signed the document that sent a proposal of an amendment to the states, which would become the Emancipation Proclamation, on February 1, 1865. It was passed by Senate on April 8, 1864 and passed by House on January 31, 1865. On December 6, 1865 (almost towards the end of the war), the sufficient amount of states approved of the amendment, but Lincoln was murdered by John W. Booth at the Ford's Theatre in Washington before he could see its ratification. The Emancipation Proclamation stated that starting January 1, 1863, slaves in the Confederate States would be free. It specifically said they “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”. As the article “Thirteenth Amendment” states, “While the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave (there were an estimated 800,000 slaves in Border States and some 3 million more in Confederate states), it was an important turning point in the war, transforming the fight to preserve the nation into a battle for human freedom”.
Photograph of a celebration due to the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in Massachusetts, 1862