Emancipation Proclamation said that the slaves were free but did not have the authority to free them didn’t it?
When Union troops entered the South they were freeing slaves on the way according to the EP from Lincoln. In looking at the EP there were no slaves in the North to free, he had really no jurisdiction in the South and he was leery of offending the Border States and push them into the South’s war. The black abolitionist Frederick Douglas spoke out against the legality of the EP as in, what can it really do to end slavery.
“Emancipation Proclamation said that the slaves were free but did not have the authority to free them didn’t it?”
The EP freed nobody. It did not apply to any state or territory that had not seceded, and even then it did not apply to the slaves in those areas of the seceded states that were under federal control. In the states over which there was no federal control there was no legal authority to enforce it. Thus, the EP freed no one.