I think Seward disagreed with you.
"We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
George Washington surly didn't think that when he put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Are you saying that a President today should be powerless to put down a rebellion?
No more so than a King confronting a Rebellion in his Colonies. Washington established the right of a people to break away from a government which they felt no longer served their interests, and Lincoln dis-established it.
Call it Rebellion, or secession, or whatever, it is still the same principle involved. The Nation was established by declaring it's right to self governance, but apparently it doesn't recognize that right as applying to anyone else.
The fact remains, that by the end of the Civil War, and before the 13 Amendment was ratified, 3 million slaves were freed because of the EP as Union troops moved through the South.
The common Lost Cause idiot dodge is that Lincoln did not free 'Northern' slaves. The only 'northern' slaves were those in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri (which no one considered Northern States in those days) and Lincoln had no legal ability to free them under the Constitution since those states were not in rebellion. Lincoln did appeal to those states to free their slaves and Missouri and Maryland did as he requested.
But as Commander in Chief of the Armed forces, he did have the power to order his commanders to seize enemy property (slaves) in areas in rebellion, and dispose of them as necessary -- i.e. freedom.
It was a brilliant stroke.
To say that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves is a gross untruth. By the end of the civil war, over 3 million were freed with nearly 100,000 of those newly freed slaves serving in the Union Army.