“Persons NOT being “People.””
That sounds like a distinction without a difference. What’s your point?
"Not" is never without difference. "People" are the unincorporated human beings of the preamble of the Constitution who have God-given rights.
"Persons" are incorporated "individuals" who have government granted privileges.
So technically, all Lincoln did was assert federal ownership over State-authorized slaves, thus "freeing" them from their slavery under State law by transferring them to federal control.
But he did nothing for an already free people.
Except perhaps start to confuse this extraordinarily important distinction, which was then buried into normalization (but not changed) in the 13th and especially the 14th Amendments - and remains little known by the public to this day.