As Blavity previously reported, President Abraham Lincoln did not see the end of slavery or the equality of Black people as the goal of the Civil War. Nevertheless, as the Confederate states continued to rebel against even the possibility of slavery being ended, Lincoln grew more willing to try radical measures to win the conflict. This included issuing a declaration that all enslaved people in the rebelling states were free, a move that Lincoln said was done to help the North win the war. Regardless of his motives, however, the Emancipation Proclamation was a huge deal, legally abolishing slavery in most of the country (it did not apply to slave states like Delaware that remained in the Union). The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on Sept. 22, 1862, but went into effect on New Year’s Day 1863.

Famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke of the importance of this moment in a speech he gave at Spring Street AME Zion Church in Rochester, New York, on the Sunday before emancipation. “It surpasses our most enthusiastic hopes that we live at such a time and are likely to witness the downfall, at least the legal downfall, of slavery in America,” he said. Describing the emotions that he and Black people around the country felt, Douglass declared, “It is a moment for joy, thanksgiving and praise.” Black people around the country gathered in churches on New Year’s Eve to praise, pray and celebrate the coming emancipation, creating a tradition of Watch Night services that presently continues in Black churches across the U.S. Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately end the war or even prevent slavery from continuing in the South, as noted in the tradition of Juneteenth, it did in many ways strike the death blow against American slavery — on New Year’s Day 1863, Black people across the South finally woke up free, whether they knew it yet or not.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

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