[Blood of Tyrants]

Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation freed no one.

[jocon307]

“Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation freed no one.”

HA, yeah, that really annoyed me the first time I read it. All the slaves under Lincoln’s jurisdiction, were still slaves. Only the slaves in the states in rebellion were freed (or were to be freed if the South didn’t surrender, is that it?).

But, of course, none of those slave owners or their elected representatives acknowledged Lincoln’s authority, so it was essentially moot.

Is it the most famous legally moot declaration in history? Or are there scores of them?

[hanamizu]

“Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation freed no one.”

---

Well, it did and it didn’t. Lincoln despite being pretty much self educated realized he didn’t have the Constitutional authority to require Americans to wear masks or to free slaves who were the legal property of Americans. But as Commander-in Chief, he could, as a war measure, emancipate slaves held by those in rebellion against the U.S. depriving Confederates of their labor.

So it freed no one on January 1, 1863. But it did free thousands as soon as the Union army occupied Confederate held territory. Prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, some (but not all) Union commanders felt legally compelled to return runaway slaves to their owners, the Fugitive Slave Act was still the law of the land.

As the war and the Union Army progressed, the Emancipation Proclamation did, in fact, free most (but not all) of the slaves in the United States. The 13th Amendment freed the rest, although by the time it was passed, most Union slave states had already abolished slavery.

[Alter Kaker]

Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation freed no one.

Um, that's not correct. Tens of thousands of slaves were freed instantly, and the US Army used it to effectively free several million slaves prior to passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Emancipation Proclamation had a massive impact on the South's ability to maintain its economy and wage war.