“Nevertheless, they, THE MILITARY, “FOLLOWED the directives and emancipation orders of their government....” “
Which, when it gets right down to it, was not to free anyone.
The Emancipation Proclamation, for instance, freed no one: It specifically did NOT apply to any area of the South that was under federal control, nor did it apply to any state or territory that was not “in rebellion,” so it did not apply to the neutral slave states or even those few Northern states that still had some slaves (granted, not many slaves). It only applied to the states still “in rebellion,” but as soon as any areas of those states came under federal control, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a ploy by Lincoln to try to stir up the slaves into an uprising against the Confederacy.
The only slaves that were “liberated” were those who agreed to join the Union forces to fight against the Confederates. Those who did not so agree were not freed, but were put under arrest and confined. That pissed off a good number of the Union troops who had to guard them.
Not true.
The January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation immediately freed around 25,000 slaves in Confederate areas then under Union Army control.
By war's end, Union Army control extended over most of the Confederacy, effectively freeing about 3,000,000 slaves.
The Emancipation was strictly a war-time presidential decree, not a duly enacted law or constitutional amendment.
By December 1865, amendment and laws were passed, constitutionally freeing all four million former slave.
So, in January 1863, Lincoln had done what he constitutionally could do, and it did have some good effect.
Back to my original point:
Effective in the election of 1856, and thereafter, the Radical Republicans controlled Congress. RReps were the Abolitionists and were dedicated to freeing the slaves in whatever manner necessary some as harshly as John Brown and some as gradually as Seward. Those Union men who entered the military elected the Abolitionists they served under.
Your are quibbling over dates .... the 330,000 White Union died over four years and did not die on the date of their first day in service and the slaves were not freed in a flash on the same date, BUT FREED THEY WERE because the 330,000 died following the instructions the government THEY elected, and knowingly followed.
Lincoln’s 1858 view of slavery, not like the citizens did not know slavery was out if Lincoln was in:
“I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.”