Freedom in Helena!

President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation changed the Civil War from a war to preserve the Union to a war to end slavery and freed slaves in Arkansas and the other states in rebellion against the United States. It went into effect on January 1, 1863, and in Helena, men, women, and children who had fled farms and plantations to follow the Union army celebrated through New Year’s Eve into the early morning, rejoicing that they were free. Yet for many formerly enslaved people in Arkansas outside Helena, freedom could not be exercised unless they escaped Confederate control, and in the first months of 1863 hundreds came into Helena, while some stayed and many continued north. The proclamation freed millions but did not free all enslaved people because certain areas were exempt, and slavery in the United States was not abolished until the Thirteenth Amendment became law in December 1865.

Helena-West Helena, Arkansas · United States