[DoodleDawg]

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued three years into the war, and it only applied to the territory Lincoln’s government didn’t control. It did nothing to free a single slave.

It freed every slave in the areas under control of the forces of the rebellion. Didn't you read it?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

**It freed every slave in the areas...***

So many former slaves were now following Sherman’s army they were tricked and abandoned at Ebenezer creek where hundreds or thousands (depending on the source) drowned trying to cross.

[TBP]

IOW, it freed nobody, because it only applied where the Confederacy was in control, not the Union. As a practical matter, it did nada. Had he intended to f4ree slaves, he could have easily applied it everywhere, not just in the areas he didn’t control.