The document compares the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln in 1863 that freed slaves in Confederate states to the Russian Emancipation Manifesto issued by Tsar Alexander II in 1861 that freed serfs. Both were issued to modernize their economies - Lincoln also aimed to undermine the Confederacy and Alexander II wanted to prevent peasant uprisings. They granted former slaves and serfs new legal rights and freedoms but also posed economic issues for slave/serf owners who lost their workforce.