Lincoln didn't officially free the slaves in the Confederacy until the formal Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. But he announced his intention to do it 100 days earlier, in what historians call the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This — and Lincoln's hand-written manuscript — are both on display starting this weekend in Harlem.
"There's a simple way to remember it, as this moral moment of freedom. But as always with politics, there's actually a complicated history behind it," says John King, New York State's commissioner of education.
