Not so. The EP did not free a single slave. It wasn't meant to. The purpose of the EP was to keep the British and the French from recognizing the Confederacy.
Not only did slaves in captured areas remain slaves, but many were actually rounded up and concentrated into so-called "contraband camps" where they were pressed into unpaid labor for the Union.
“Not so. The EP did not free a single slave”
Are you trying to argue that 50,000 slaves weren’t officially freed the same day it was passed? Or that 4 million hadn’t been freed by 1865? Or is the idea that they would have been freed anyway, by the logic of an invading army, and that the proclamation was little more than PR? Or is the idea that they weren’t really freed before the 13th amendment did the job, and everything before that was a show?
Granted, the EP is over-praised. Its chief worth is as a first step, and a largely symbolic one at that, on the road to eventual general manumission, yes. However, the idea that it did nothing is preposterous. We KNOW it directly freed slaves. Even if it’s just the ones you admit existed, namely the ones who rounded up for corvée labor.
“many were actually rounded up and concentrated into so-called ‘contraband camps’ where they were pressed into unpaid labor for the Union.”
Yes, our government does things like that. Same way it coerced labor from Northerners via the draft. Not unpaid, exactly, but involuntary and below market wages.