The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. In a single stroke it changed the legal status, as recognized by the U.S. government, of 3 million enslaved people in designated areas of the Confederacy from "slave" to "free." It had the practical effect that as soon as an enslaved person escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through advances of federal troops, the enslaved person became legally and actually free.