False. Folks always point to the Emancipation Proclamation as freeing the slaves. But if that were true then it should have affected all slave states. Lincoln was very careful in his wording of the Emancipation. It only affected those slaves in areas in open rebellion against the Federal government. In otherwords, the slaves in Delaware, Maryland, West Viginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, the Union Boarder States, were left in bondage while the slaves in the Confederacy were the only ones affected by the Emancipation. The problem was, during the war the Confederacy was a seperate nation and the states which made up the Confederacy were not governed by Washington. So not only was Lincoln's writing of the Emanicpation politically in effective, it could only come into effect when Union forces controlled an area and when the commanding general was willing to enforce it. Which not all generals were.
What the Emancipation really was for was to further make the actions of the Confederacy be seen as being illegal. While it is true that the Confederacy was a seperate nation, unless it won the war it was not an independent nation. Washington's policies had no actual effect towards governing the Confederacy, but at the same time it was able to claim authority over the states of the Confederacy as they were not yet independent despite seceding and forming their own government. Thus anything that made the Confederacy's action be viewed as illegal to the rest of the world aided the Union's war effort by ensuring other nations were less likely to ally themselves with the Confederacy militarily. It also meant there would be more folks willing to join to put down those disobeying the the laws. Not everyone felt this way, obviously.
