150 years ago, the entire reason for the Civil War changed.

Although the majority of men in the Northern ranks enlisted to restore the Union, on Jan. 1, 1863, President Lincoln’s final Emancipation Proclamation declared that all persons held in bondage in areas still in rebellion were free. It is important to point out that the Proclamation did NOT free slaves in areas which were firmly under Union control, or in states that never seceded, such as most of Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, and others.

Responses to the Proclamation varied. Some Union soldiers balked; others saw it as a war expediency. The few abolitionists among them, of course, were enthusiastic – though many of them were disappointed that it still left slavery intact in certain areas.

In the South, the reaction ranged from amused skepticism to vitrolic outrage. Some Southerners saw the Emancipation Proclamation as a desperate measure, a last-ditch effort of a defeated and powerless North to weild power where it had none – behind Southern lines.Others guffawed at the act as being absurd, impossible to enforce. Still others – chief among them, politicians in Richmond, reacted with horror and venomous words.

Southern politicians had been hoping since October that the U.S. would withdraw the policies laid out in the preliminary emancipation proclamation (issued in late September) – but now, the Confederates found Lincoln’s final document had gone even further – it declared that Union armies would now be accepting and arming former slaves! Black men could now join the Union military. The proposal outraged Southern planters and their representatives in the Confederate Congress.

Two more years of hard war lay ahead, and it remained to be seen exactly what the Emancipation meant. Would it even have any practical impact at all? Thousands remained in bondage. What would the new year of 1863 bring?