Today is the 155th anniversary of the signing (but not the release) of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Critics remarked even at the time that it didn't free a single slave, since it only applied to areas where the president's authority was not being recognized. Perhaps that's underselling it a bit, but it was certainly true that it happily left slaves in union slave states to continue their condition indefinitely.
So of course today I see people on twitter saying it freed the slaves, followed by a deluge of #WellActually responses, occasionally followed by defenses that say, "Yeah, but I only have 140 characters!"
That got me thinking, what would be a good accurate explanation of the importance of the Emancipation Proclamation that fits in 140 characters or less? Its possible we could help save twitter, and perhaps even a journalist or two, a lot of bandwidth.