when did abraham lincoln free the slaves?
""The Emancipation Proclamation...can remind us in 2013 of all the mistakes we never want to commit again but it can also motivate us to fulfill to an ever greater degree the definitive freedom-sustaining and life-enhancing principles of democracy in living action.""
entailment
 The Emancipation Proclamation , issued on September 22 , 1862 , and put into effect on January 1 , 1863 , declared free the slaves in 10 states not then under Union control , with exemptions specified for areas already under Union control in two states . Lincoln spent the next 100 days preparing the army and the nation for emancipation , while Democrats rallied their voters in the 1862 off @-@ year elections by warning of the threat freed slaves posed to northern whites . 

entailment
 On January 1 , 1863 Lincoln 's Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves held in bondage in the Southern states or territories then in rebellion against the federal government . On February 2 , 1863 Congress built on Wilson 's 1862 law by passing a bill authored by Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens , which authorized the enlistment of 150 @,@ 000 African Americans into the Union Army for service as uniformed soldiers . 

neutral
 On Christmas Day 1868 , Johnson issued a final amnesty , this one covering everyone , including Davis . He also issued , in his final months in office , pardons for crimes , including one for Dr. Samuel Mudd , controversially convicted of involvement in the Lincoln assassination ( he had set Booth 's broken leg ) and imprisoned in Fort Jefferson on Florida 's Dry Tortugas . 

contradiction
 This was not an end to slavery , as this only confirmed it was illegal in England and Wales , not in the rest of the British Empire . As a result of Mansfield 's decision , between 14 @,@ 000 and 15 @,@ 000 slaves were immediately freed in England , some of whom remained with their masters as paid employees . The decision was apparently not immediately followed ; Africans were still hunted and kidnapped in London , Liverpool and Bristol to be sold elsewhere . ( Such an incident was recounted by Olaudah Equiano in 1774 in his autobiography , An Interesting Narrative ( 1789 ) . ) 

entailment
 The abolition of slavery was prepared in Abraham Lincoln 's Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 – 63 . Slavery in the United States was eventually abolished when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on December 6 , 1865 . The amendment declared that " Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude ( ... ) shall exist within the United States " . Abraham Lincoln ( 1809 – 65 ) was the 16th President of the United States . 
