The Emancipation Proclamation is a short text—a little over 700 words. It was issued on January 1, 1863, after a different proclamation made on September 22 that stated what was coming—namely, that the president was going to emancipate enslaved people who lived in the Confederacy. The document from September is called the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and it is important to know because the text of the Emancipation Proclamation quotes a long passage from it.

Briefly, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation declared that on January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in the rebelling states would be “forever free” (Paragraph 3). It also encouraged the Confederate States to rejoin the union by promising they would be compensated for the loss of their wealth, and it stated that the US would fund a plan for African Americans to return to Africa, if they desired, or go colonize some other place in the world.

The Emancipation Proclamation is written in the formal language of a legal document, with nested clauses. It has the structure: Whereas X, now I do this, this, this, this, and this. The “whereas” says that the president issued a proclamation in September and then quotes two substantial paragraphs from that document.