A. <span>God’s deliverance of the plague to Egyptian firstborns
The plague that took the life of firstborn sons was the tenth of the plagues sent against Egypt, pressing them to let the Israelite people go free from their land. The Israelite people were spared from the plague by sacrificing a lamb and marking their doorposts with blood from the lamb that was sacrificed.</span>
It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten Confederate states still in rebellion. It also decreed that freed slaves could be enlisted in the Union Army, thereby increasing the Union's available manpower.
