Emancipation Proclamation

     Issued by president Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862, which gave Confederate states one hundred days to surrender without losing their slaves, which provided for a cleaner and easier way for the war to end. Not necessarily violently and bloodily. When this gradual approach elicited no response from the South, Lincoln simply continued forth and on The first of January, 1863, he declared all slaves in areas under Confederate control to be "thence forward, and forever free" and authorized the enlisting of these newly freed slaves in the Union army. This recruited approximately 200,000 more able bodied soldiers for the Union army, in addition to accelerating the already underway breakdown of the labor force of slaves.