President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the country moved toward its third year of the wicked common war. The announcement proclaimed "that all people held as slaves" inside the defiant states are, and henceforward might be free." On September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln issued his preparatory Emancipation Proclamation, in which he proclaimed that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in states in disobedience to the Union "might be at that point, thenceforward, and perpetually free.
The government created under the Articles lacked the power to tax. And the only way it could get money to pay its debts was to ask states to give funds. But states didn't have to or didn't give enough. So all in all the federal government was pretty weak.
