No Confederate states took the offer, and on January 1 Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared, "all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part ...

Lincoln then read aloud a 325-word first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, intended to free slaves in Confederate areas not under United States authority. Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the ...

ST. LOUIS – In 1861, Major General John C. Fremont issued an emancipation proclamation in St. Louis, freeing slaves in ...