• The Emancipation Proclamation invited former slaves to join the Union military. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 African-American soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union.
• One of the earliest and most important tasks for the U.S. Government Printing Office, founded in 1861, was the preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation that was printed the following year.
• The original Emancipation Proclamation is at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC.

To learn more, and to read the full text of the Emancipation Proclamation, see the Emancipation Proclamation site at the National Archives.

To learn more about the history of African Americans and the struggle for freedom and equality, visit the African American Odyssey site at the Library of Congress.

To see original documents from the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana, search the Library of Congress collection using the keywords ‘Emancipation Proclamation'.