Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation was a notice from the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, that said all the slaves in the Southern states of the United States were free. It was issued in 1863. This meant that those slaves, who had previously been the property of their masters, were no longer slaves and could be free. This was a big step forward in the fight against slavery in the United States and it helped to set the stage for the civil rights movement and the eventual passage of laws that ended slavery in the US.