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For two long days, it was as if much of the United States was holding its breath—either in anticipation or in anger. Since April 1861, the country had been divided by the brutal
Beginning on New Year’s Eve, formerly enslaved people and their supporters throughout the nation paused for something like hope. Many waited in churches and assembly halls. Thousands of Black Americans met together in camps where most of them had lived since escaping from slavery.
The great
Deep into the evening of January 1, that bolt finally came. Word arrived that the president had signed the