The Emancipation Proclamation Pocket Version was specially printed as a pamphlet and distributed so that it could be read aloud by a Union soldier to those freed as Union troops advanced after January 1, 1863.
That happened in Vicksburg, the day the U.S. Flag was flown over the Warren County Court House on July 4, 1863 and Union troops took control of Vicksburg under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant.
In many narratives from former slaves recorded by WPA workers in 1941, statements like the following were typical: 'I was on Master Johnson's plantation and a soldier came and he took out a little piece of paper and suddenly said we were free.'
That little piece of paper was one of these pamphlets. That did not happen until June 1865 in Texas, where the tradition of Juneteenth began.~
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