Understanding Emancipation

Emancipation Day is an annual holiday celebrated on April 16 in Washington, D.C., commemorating the signing of the Compensated Emancipation Act by President Abraham Lincoln on April 16, 1862, which officially ended slavery in Washington, D.C.

January 1, 1863, would become known as the date of the Final Emancipation Proclamation, in which Lincoln declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the states that had seceded from the Union “are, and henceforth shall be, free.”

The abolition of slavery in the United States was a long and cumulative process, and a central theme of the Civil War. Numerous laws, as well as grassroots efforts and increasing pressure from petitions and the press, were necessary to abolish slavery. The international importation of enslaved people into the U.S. was outlawed in 1808; however, slavery persisted within national borders, and different laws applied in different states.