Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.  We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves.  No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us.  The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honour or dishonour, to the latest generation.  We say we are for the Union.  The world will not forget that we say this.  We know how to save the Union.  The world knows we do know how to save it.

We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.  In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free,—­honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve.  We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth.  Other means may succeed; this could not fail.  The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just,—­a way which, if followed, the world will for ever applaud, and God must for ever bless.

Emancipation Proclamation.  January 1, 1863

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit: 

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and for ever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

“That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall in the absence of strong countervailing testimony be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States.”

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit: