life:

On this day in 1865, the 13th amendment is ratified — this officially ended slavery.

The Civil War was a fight about competing freedoms: the freedom to choose one’s own government, the freedom of states to leave a federation, the freedom of people to decide their own laws. But in the end, the freedom that prevailed was the one that declared that all men are to be considered human beings, not property.

Integral to the fight for that principle — on the front lines, building military infrastructure, and carrying vital information — were African Americans, many of them escaped slaves who risked their lives as the fate of future generations hung in the balance.

(see more — African Americans in the Civil War)