History & philosophy · 1863
The Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863
Lincoln’s proclamation declaring free the persons held as slaves within the States then in rebellion.
Read the text The whole poster as a web page
- Print from
- A3
- License
- Public domain (U.S. Government work)
- Source
- archives.gov
- Retrieved
- 27 September 2026
- Language
- English
- Rights holder
- Abraham Lincoln, 1863
Theme
Download
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- 50 × 70 cm
- 60 × 80 cm
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Print from A3: the smallest A size at which the body text is at least 8 pt.
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Edition
Transcription by the National Archives (“Transcript of the Proclamation, January 1, 1863, A Transcription”), from “By the President of the United States of America: A Proclamation.” to “WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.”, word for word, with its punctuation, its bracketed editorial parenthesis “[)]” and its capitals. The two paragraphs quoted from the preliminary proclamation of September 22, 1862 are indented, and the signatures are set on two lines at the right, as the transcription gives them in one paragraph broken by a line break.
Rights
Issued by the President of the United States in his official capacity on 1 January 1863 and published the same year: in the United States, a work published before 1931 and a work of the federal government (17 U.S.C. 105), as is the transcription of the National Archives. In France, its author, Abraham Lincoln, died on 15 April 1865, long before 1 January 1956, and it is an official act of a public authority.
The National Archives state: “Works of the U.S. Government that have been produced by the National Archives and Records Administration are in the public domain and may be copied and distributed without permission.” (https://www.archives.gov/global-pages/privacy.html)
