emancipation

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Happy New Edition! Ring in the New Year with 
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?c11.htm&1
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The Word of the Day for January 1 is: 

emancipation   \ih-man-suh-PAY-shun\   noun
     : the act or process of freeing from bondage 

Example sentence:
     Jomo Kenyatta played a key role in the emancipation of 
Kenya from European rule in the 1960s and became the first 
president of the newly independent nation.

Did you know?
     In his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham 
Lincoln wrote, "On the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all 
persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a 
State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the 
United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." 
Lincoln's proclamation ordered that slaves living in rebellious 
territories be taken away from the bonds of ownership and made 
free people, their own masters. Though the proclamation's 
initial impact was limited, the order was true to the etymology 
of "emancipation," which comes from a combination of the 
prefix "e-" (meaning "away") and the Latin verb "mancipare" 
(meaning "to transfer ownership of").