Reptile
Ultimate Member
How can they.. DC just made it up.. lol
This has been a DC holiday since 2005. Lincoln freed the slaves in DC a few months before the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the Confederacy. The law authorized compensation to DC slave owners for each slave they held. It did not affect slaves held by other northern states, including Maryland and Delaware. Even if they escaped to DC or another free state, fugitive slave laws were still in effect until 1864. Even then four US states still had legal slavery until after the Civil War.