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On April 16, 1862, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, an act that freed more than 3000 slaves in Washington D.C. |
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| Here is an excerpt from the Compensated Emancipation Act: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons held to service or labor within the District of Columbia by reason of African descent are hereby discharged and freed of and from all claim to such service or labor; and from and after the passage of this act neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime, whereof the party shall be duly convicted, shall hereafter exist in said District. |
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One hundred and fifty years later, citizens continue to mark this event with Emancipation Day and activities aimed to educate people about the history of slavery and the District of Columbia.
The history of the Compensated Emancipation Act
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“I trust I am not dreaming, but the events taking place seem like a dream,” the great orator Frederick Douglass wrote of the Emancipation Act. |
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Before he was elected president, Congressman Lincoln introduced a plan to eliminate slavery in Washington, D.C., however that bill failed.
In December 1861, another bill was introduced in Congress for the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. This bill succeeded and passed the Senate on April 3, the House of Representatives on April 12, and was signed into law by President Lincoln four days later.
The law set aside $1 million to give Union-friendly slaveholders up to $300 per freed slave and paid each newly freed slave $100.
It also brought an end to what anti-slavery advocates called "the national shame" of slavery in the nation's capital.
Slavery in the United States
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This map shows free and slave states before the Civil War began in 1861. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. |
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The first English colony in North America, Virginia, acquired its first slaves in 1619, after a ship arrived with a cargo of about 20 Africans. By 1860, there were about four million slaves in America.
Although thousands of slaves were freed by the Compensated Emancipation Act, slavery did not officially end in the rest of the United States until after the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 until 1865.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution formally ended slavery in the U.S. It was proposed on January 31, 1865, and approved by 30 of the then 36 states in the same year.
Although many of the states adopted this law in the same year, it was only ratified in Mississippi in 1995.
Slavery and the racial divisions, upon which it was based, have had and continue to affect individuals and American society as a whole.
Observing Emancipation Day
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Emancipation Day is celebrated at the African American Civil War Museum in Washington D.C. |
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Emancipation Day is a day off of school in the District of Columbia and residents celebrate with a wide arrange of events, including exhibitions, public discussion, concerts and poetry readings.
This year, Washington celebrates the 150th anniversary of Emancipation Day, with a parade, fireworks and a city-wide scavenger hunt. |
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| --Compiled by Thaisi H. Da Silva for NewsHour Extra |
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