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Imagine that you have been
a slave your whole life. One day, someone gathers all the slaves together
and reads out loud something called the “Emancipation Proclamation.”
It’s a statement by President Abraham Lincoln declaring that slaves
are now free. How would that feel? How did it happen?
Slavery first came to the U.S. Colonies
in the early 1600’s. Different colonies had different laws about
slavery. Later, when those colonies became states, they still had different
laws about slavery. There wasn’t just one law for the whole country.
In Northern states like Massachusetts and New York, for example, slavery
was against the law. In Southern states like Georgia and Virginia, slavery
was legal.
In
the 1800’s, more people began speaking out against slavery. Most
– but not all -- of the people who wanted it to be illegal were
in the North. But the slave owners in the South didn’t agree.
They depended on slave work to make money. Most of them grew crops like
tobacco and cotton, which need a lot of workers. To pay all of those
workers, the Southern slave owners said, would mean they would have
to be poor. Slavery was a way of life in the South, and the slave owners
did not want to change it. Although many Northerners wanted the South
to change, they did not want to force them to do so. The two sides tried
to find a compromise, but none lasted. In the end, they fought a war
– the Civil War – that settled the issue permanently.
During the war, President Abraham Lincoln
decided the time had come to take the risk of telling the South what
to do. In 1862, he wrote the “Emancipation Proclamation.”
“Emancipation” means freedom, and a “Proclamation”
is a statement made by a ruler, like a President.
The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves
in the South. Slaves who were freed were stunned by the news, and overjoyed.
They were no longer anyone’s property – they were free.
Many of them simply stopped working and walked away from their homes,
heading North. Others stayed behind to work – for pay.
| Click
here to read a typewritten copy of the Emancipation Proclamation.
|
But Lincoln was not done. He had freed
the slaves only in certain states. And a statement made by a President
is a law – but it is not the strongest kind of law. In our country,
the most important set of laws is called the Constitution.
Lincoln knew that his Proclamation could be changed – for example,
if another President came in who wanted slavery. That’s why he
pushed for the country to change the Constitution. That’s hard
to do – many people have to agree to it.
In 1865, the United States passed a Constitutional
Amendment – a change to the basic law of our land. The change
was called the Thirteenth Amendment, and it made slavery illegal in
all of the United States for all time.
| Click
here to take a quiz on your knowledge of the Constitution. |
