Andrew Johnson Trial

Although Abraham Lincoln was opposed to slavery before he became president in 1861, he did not initially believe that the federal government should become involved in the issue. Events forced the transformation that led to Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863. When Lincoln became president, 11 slaveholding states seceded, launching the Civil War. Lincoln began to perceive the war as not simply over preserving the Union, but over freedom. He drafted the Emancipation Proclamation in July of 1862.

He waited for a Union victory before announcing the proclamation to the nation, after the Battle of Antietam on 17 September 1862, the bloodiest day in American history. On 22 September Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves only in the Confederate states, but not in the slaveholding Union states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. (Lincoln needed those states to remain in the Union in order to win the war.) The proclamation would not go into full effect until 1 January, giving the Confederate states an opportunity to surrender before losing their slaves. The Confederacy continued to fight, the war ended two years later, and all slaves throughout the United States were freed.