On the night of 31 December 1862, African American congregations across the northern United States and in areas under Union control gathered in churches to wait through the night for the moment the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln the previous September and set to take legal effect on 1 January 1863, would formally free enslaved people in territory still in rebellion against the federal government. Accounts from the period describe congregations praying, singing and holding vigil through the final hours of the year, watching for word, by whatever means reached them, that the proclamation had taken effect.
The gathering became known afterward as Freedom's Eve or the Emancipation Watch Night, and it drew on an older tradition of Watch Night religious services already practiced in many Protestant and especially Methodist congregations, historically observed as a solemn occasion of prayer and spiritual reflection on New Year's Eve reaching back to earlier eighteenth century practice, now given new and specific meaning by the historical moment through which these particular congregations were living.
News of the proclamation's actual legal effect reached different communities at different speeds depending on their location and access to information, and for enslaved people in Confederate-held territory, the proclamation's practical effect depended heavily on the presence and advance of Union forces rather than taking hold uniformly and immediately across the affected region.