1. We
are
free

2. Early stages
•The Civil War had
originally been fought
over the issue of states’
rights, but the January 1,
1863 changed all of that.

3. Early stages
•On that day, President
Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation became the
law throughout the
Confederacy, but not the
Union.

4. Early stages
• The process that the
Emancipation Proclamation
started was finally
completed in
December, 1865, when the
Thirteenth Amendment
was ratified by the states.

5. Early stages
• This amendment said that
“Neither slavery nor
involuntary
servitude, except as
punishment for a
crime…shall exist within
the United States.”

6. assistance
•Unfortunately for those
newly freed slaves, many
of them had no idea what
to do with their new found
freedom.

7. assistance
• The Lincoln administration
, who had started the
amendment process in
February, 1865, in response
to these needs organized the
Freedman’s Bureau, the
first major federal relief
agency.

8. assistance
• It gave out clothing, medical
supplies, and millions of
meals to both African
Americans and whites, and
gave many freedmen their
first taste of education.

9. assistance
•Unfortunately for many
freedmen, the bureau
lacked strong support in
Congress and was pretty
much torn apart by 1869.

10. Read and answer questions about
Lincoln’s Plan for Reconstruction
and the Wade-Davis Bill proposed
by the Radical Republicans