President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation declared all enslaved persons in most Southern states free as of Jan. 1, 1863. That came during the Civil War — a conflict whose main cause was slavery.
Many plantation and slave owners in the South migrated to Texas to escape the fighting, increasing the number of enslaved people in Texas just prior to the end of the Civil War. Slaves in Texas, most of whom were isolated geographically, were not made aware of the Emancipation Proclamation until June 19, 1865.
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