As I said before, even historians sympathetic to the Northern cause, Bruce Catton for example, do not make that claim. And what about the fact that with the early announcement of the proclamation, several months before the actual issuance, Lincoln implicitely promised that in any states that would return to the Union prior to the January issuance, slaveowners could keep their slaves.
What about it. I doubt that Lincon expected any takers, but he made an offer to help bring the war to a quicker end. The EP was a war measure and a political statement, but it did have the end result of freeing millions of slaves. Look up Juneteenth and tell me it didn't free any slaves.