[R. Scott]

And Delaware.

[wardaddy]

no slave under Union control anywhere was freed under the Emancipation.

It only freed slaves in areas still in rebellion, secession, whatever the F folks prefer to call it..lol.

It was symbolic and has only recently become a lost book of the Bible after the PC crowd saw legs in it for further South bashing and white guilt fodder which has now morphed into Red State bashing btw.

[Ditto]

Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky were all exempt from the EP as were many counties in Confederate states were the Union forces held control. If you bothered to study the issue as opposed to looking for any excuse to bash Lincoln, (sort of like the Rats with Bush -- facts don't matter) you would understand why the Emancipation Proclamation did not, and could not possibly apply to loyal states or those areas of disloyal states under Union control.

The EP was a war time military order that only applied where military law (martial law) was in effect. As President, Lincoln had absolutely no authority under the Constitution to end slavery (read seize private property) in jurisdictions where US Courts could function. Any Court, would have rightly overturned such an order.

But as CIC, he could issue such an order to his military commanders operating under Martial Law to "free slaves" ("seize and dispose of enemy property, not end slavery) where ever they encountered slaves. As Union forces moved across the Confederacy over the next two years, nearly 3 million slaves were freed under the EP. But it took a Constitutional Amendment (the 13th which Lincoln pushed through Congress) to legally end slavery in America. It was not ratified by the necessary number of states until the end of 1865.

As a side note, very early in his 1st them, Lincoln wrote to the representatives of the 4 Union slave states urging them to end slavery (even offering Federal compensation) and reminding them that the outcome of the war would surely be the end of slavery in America and it was best for them to get ahead of the process. Before the end of the war, and before the 13th Amendment took effect, the Maryland and Missouri legislatures voted on their own to end slavery as did the western counties of Virginia as a condition of being admitted to the Union as the state of West Virginia. Delaware and Kentucky did not.