Employment Fast Facts, Last Updated:09/07/2010 The 1860s saw the end ofslavery in America. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of1863 was a symbolic gesturethat proclaimed freedom for slaves within the Confederacy but notthose in the strategically important border states of Tennessee,Maryland or Deleware. However, the proclamation made the abolitionof slavery an official war goal and it was implemented as the Unionretook territory from the Confederacy. Legally, slaveswithin the United States remained enslaved until the finalratification of the ThirteenthAmendment to the Constitution in December of 1865, 8 months after the cessation ofhostilities in the Civil War. However, practically, theslaves in many parts of the south were freed by Union armies or bythe chaos of the time, when they simply left their former owners.Many joined the UnionArmy as supporting workers or combatant troops, and many morefled to Northern cities or stayed close to Union troops. WhenGeneral Sherman led his famous marchthrough the South to Atlanta and Savannah, hundreds of thousands ofnew 'freedmen' followed him in his wake, effectively renderingSherman's army an army of liberation, in some part mitigating thedevastation inflicted by it upon the regions of the South throughwhich it passed. |
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