Reconstruction Era Almanac | Slavery's End Brings Both Joy and Confusion

• Slaves rejoice
• A Letter from a Former Slave
• The changes freedom brought
• The Black Church: A Source of Strength
• Rebuilding the South
• The struggle for civil rights begins
• For More Information

January 1, 1863, was a day of joy for African Americans. On that day, President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; served 1861–65) signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that most of the four million black people who had, beginning in the seventeenth century, been enslaved in the Southern United States were forever free. The Civil War (1861–65) had raged for two years by then, pitting the Northern...