The Emancipation Proclamation was signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. This meant, " all persons held as slaves are, and henceforward shall be free" (Miller 1). Even though the document stated the slaves would be freed, it was limited in many ways. It only applied to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery as is in the loyal border states. Although it did not end slavery, after the document was signed, it changed the hearts of the Americans. After January 1, 1863, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy. By the end of the war, there was an estimated 200,000 black men who had fought for the Union and freedom. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. This document is thought to be one of the greatest documents of human freedom. .
Harriet was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1813 to the parents of Delilah and Daniel Jacobs. Her father was a carpenter, while her mother was a house slave. Jacobs grew up with a younger brother by the name of John S. Jacobs. She enjoyed a relatively normal, happy family life up until she was six years old when her mother passed, and her father followed soon after in 1826. During her teenage years, Harriet met a man by the name of Samuel Tredwell Sawyer. She then entered a liaison with him and soon after mothers their first child, Joseph. A few years after the birth of their first comes their daughter Louisa Matilda, born in 1833. After escaping to the North in 1842 at age 27, Harriet started working as a nursemaid, and in 1849 Harriet and her younger brother John began working in the Anti- Slavery office and reading room in Rochester, New York, and there they meet Fredrick Douglas, Amy Post, and many other abolitionists. Jacobs and Post became activists, both signing the petition against slavery in 1837.