Answer: 1. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, as the country entered its third year of deadly civil war. "All individuals kept as slaves" within the insurgent states "are, and henceforth shall be free," the declaration said.
2. The United States Constitution's Thirteenth Amendment (1865) effectively ended slavery. NARA The war destroyed the South, but it saved the Union, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified.