Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863

The greatest New Year's Day in our history

The Proclamation's coming was announced in September ...

promising to free all the slaves in Confederate territory. This prospect did not cause the South to stop the Civil War however but emboldened the enslaved who yearned to muster and fight in the war.

"If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is ... the Emancipation Proclamation."

When Lincoln signed it on New Year's Day ...

he held a President's Levee or open house at the Executive Mansion (now White House.) Anyone could attend and he stood for three hours greeting dignitaries and ordinary people. When he retired upstairs to sign the official document, he was tired and his hand was trembling. Dismissing his difficulty in signing, not as a divine warning, but due to the hand-shaking, he declared "I never in my life felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper." Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in American by Allen Guelzo

Emancipation however did not free the enslaved in the Northern border states. Nor did an executive proclamation promise long-lasting effect. It would take the 13th Amendment, enacted in 1865, to provide the force of Constitutional law.