Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Emancipation Proclamation===
{{Main|Emancipation Proclamation}}
[[File:EmancipationPhoto.jpg|thumb|Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation in Massachusetts, 1862]]
In July 1862, Lincoln became convinced that "a military necessity" would give him authority under the Constitution to strike at slavery in order to win the Civil War for the Union. The Confiscation Acts were having only a minimal effect to end slavery. On July 22, he wrote a first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves in states in rebellion. After he showed his Cabinet the document, slight alterations were made in the wording. Lincoln decided that the defeat of the Confederate invasion of the North at the [[Battle of Antietam]] was a sufficient battlefield victory to enable him to release the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which gave the rebels 100 days to return to the Union or the actual proclamation would be issued.<ref>Guelzo (2004), p. 152.</ref>

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, naming ten states in which slaves would be "forever free". The proclamation did not name the states of Tennessee (because it was under Union control) or Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware (because, though slave states, they had not seceded) and specifically excluded numerous counties in some other states. Eventually, as the U.S. Army advanced into the Confederacy, millions of slaves were set free. Many of these freedmen joined the U.S. Army, as the Emancipation Proclamation authorized them to do, and fought in battles against the Confederate forces.<ref name="Williams 2006 pp. 54–59"/><ref name="Catton 1963 pp. 365–367"/>{{sfnp|Guelzo|2004|p=1}} Yet hundreds of thousands of freed slaves died during emancipation from illnesses that devastated army regiments. Freed slaves suffered from smallpox, yellow fever, and malnutrition.{{sfnp|Downs|2012|p=47}}