"On the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free", stated The Emancipation Proclamation issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862, during the Civil War. It proclaimed the freedom and changed the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans.