The Emancipation Proclamation led to the end of slavery, and is one of the most controversial documents in American history. Human slavery was the focus of political conflict in the United States from the 1830s to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for presidency in 1860, personally abhorred slavery and was pledged to prevent it from spreading to western territories. At the same time he believed that the Constitution did not allow federal government to prohibit slavery in states where it already existed. The election of Lincoln led to the secession of eleven...
serve in the Army and Navy, the Emancipation Proclamation helped solve the North's problem of declining enlistments. About 200,000 black soldiers and sailors, many of them former slaves, served in the armed forces.

The Emancipation Proclamation also hurt the South by discouraging Britain and France from entering the war. Both of those nations depended on the South to supply them with cotton, and the Confederacy hoped that they would fight on its side. But the Proclamation made the war a fight against slavery, and most British and French citizens opposed slavery, so they gave their support to the Union.