2)Was the Civil War still on-going?
3)Since the South hadn't surrendered a case can be made that the EP had no effect. It was a proclamation, not a law.
1. January 1863
2. Yes the War was still going on.
3. The E. P. only had effect in the North since the Southern States had succeeded.
So, I think your premise is correct - he only freed the slaves in the North.
“When was the Emancipation Proclamation announced?”
January 1, 1863
“Was the Civil War still on-going?”
Yes.
“Since the South hadn’t surrendered a case can be made that the EP had no effect. It was a proclamation, not a law”
Not sure what you’re saying here. No, it was not a law. It was an executive act, deriving its authority from Lincoln’s wartime powers as commander in chief. Which is exactly why the only way the EP would have an effect is if the war was still going.
I don’t know about you particularly, but the anti-EP argument seems to be that the EP only applied to rebellious territory, that rebel territory was outside Lincoln’s control, and that by the time it all came under Lincoln’s control the war was over. Therefore, it didn’t do anything. And if it did, there was never any authority to do so anyway.
Nevermind that we know for a fact slaves were freed, which alone tells me at least that the argument went wrong somewhere. This line of thought is unsound on its face. Rebel territory was not all of one piece. The North conquered it piecemeal, freeing slaves as it went. People seem to think rebel territory was somehow by definition territory that Lincoln did not control. It wasn’t. It was any territory that had been in rebellion up until it wasn’t. In other words, anywhere in the Confederacy, with the exception of the parts of Virginia then morphing into West Virginia.