Editing Emancipation Proclamation (section)

==Coverage==
[[File:Emancipation Proclamation.PNG|thumb|Areas covered by the Emancipation Proclamation are in red, slave-holding areas not covered are in blue]]
The Emancipation Proclamation applied in the ten states that were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, but it did not cover the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slaveholding [[border states (American Civil War)|border states]] (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) or in parts of Virginia and Louisiana that were no longer in rebellion. Those slaves were freed by later state and federal actions.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2013-01-01 |title=150 years later, myths persist about the Emancipation Proclamation |url=https://www.cnn.com/2013/01/01/us/150-years-later-myths-persist-about-the-emancipation-proclamation/index.html |access-date=2022-07-22 |website=CNN |language=en}}</ref> The areas covered were "[[Arkansas]], [[Texas]], [[Louisiana]] (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), [[Mississippi]], [[Alabama]], [[Florida]], [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], [[South Carolina]], [[North Carolina]], and [[Virginia]] (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth)."<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last1=Irwin |first1=Richard Bache |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010407240 |title=Promulgating the Emancipation Proclamation. |last2=Banks |first2=Nathaniel Prentiss |date=1863-01-29 |series=General orders; no. 12 |author-link2=Nathaniel P. Banks |access-date=2023-07-26 |via=[[HathiTrust]]}} {{open access}}</ref>

The state of [[Tennessee]] had already mostly returned to Union control, under a recognized Union government, so it was not named and was exempted. [[Virginia]] was named, but exemptions were specified for the 48 counties then in the process of forming the new state of [[West Virginia]], and seven additional counties and two cities in the Union-controlled [[Tidewater (region)|Tidewater region]] of [[Virginia]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Freedmen and Southern Society Project|title=Freedom: a documentary history of emancipation 1861–1867 : selected from the holdings of the National Archives of the United States. The destruction of slavery|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TPg8AAAAIAAJ|year=1982|publisher=CUP Archive|isbn=978-0-521-22979-1|pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=TPg8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA69 69]}}</ref> Also specifically exempted were [[New Orleans]] and 13 named parishes of [[Louisiana]], which were mostly under federal control at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. These exemptions left unemancipated an additional 300,000 slaves.<ref>{{harvnb|Foner|2010|pp=241–242}}</ref>

The Emancipation Proclamation has been ridiculed, notably by [[Richard Hofstadter]], who wrote that it "had all the moral grandeur of a [[bill of lading]]" and "declared free all slaves ... precisely where its effect could not reach".<ref>Hofstadter, Richard, "Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth," in ''[[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It]]'' (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1948). [https://archive.org/details/americanpolitica00hofs online]. Vintage Books edition, March 1989, p. 169.</ref><ref> Similarly, [[Karl Marx]] said that the proclamation sounds like [https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1062&context=cwfac "ordinary summonses sent by one lawyer to another on the opposing side".] Quoted by [[Allen C. Guelzo]]. "'Sublime in Its Magnitude': The Emancipation Proclamation", in [[Harold Holzer|Holzer, Harold]] and Sara Vaughn Gabbard, eds., ''Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment''. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007, pp. 65-78, quotation at p. 66.</ref> Disagreeing with Hofstadter, [[William W. Freehling]] wrote that Lincoln's asserting his power as Commander-in-Chief to issue the proclamation "reads not like an entrepreneur's bill for past services but like a warrior's brandishing of a new weapon".<ref>Freehling, William W., ''The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War''. Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 118.</ref>

The Emancipation Proclamation resulted in the emancipation of a substantial percentage of the slaves in the Confederate states as the Union armies advanced through the South and slaves escaped to Union lines, or slave owners fled, leaving slaves behind. The Emancipation Proclamation also committed the Union to ending slavery in addition to preserving the Union.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation resulted in the gradual freeing of most slaves, it did not make slavery illegal. Of the states that were exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, Maryland,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/speccol/sc2600/sc2685/html/conv1864.html |title=Archives of Maryland Historical List: Constitutional Convention, 1864 |date=November 1, 1864 |access-date=November 3, 2011 |archive-date=February 20, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120220000817/http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/speccol/sc2600/sc2685/html/conv1864.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Missouri,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/event/missouri-abolishes-slavery |title=Missouri abolishes slavery |date=January 11, 1865 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120425132518/http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/event/missouri-abolishes-slavery |archive-date=April 25, 2012 }}</ref> Tennessee,<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1865/01/15/news/tennessee-state-convention-slavery-declared-forever-abolished-parson-brownlow.html |title=Tennessee State Convention: Slavery Declared Forever Abolished |newspaper=The New York Times |date=January 14, 1865}}</ref> and West Virginia<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wvculture.org/history/thisdayinwvhistory/february.html|title=On This Day in West Virginia History – February|website=www.wvculture.org}}</ref> prohibited slavery before the war ended. In 1863, President Lincoln proposed a moderate plan for the Reconstruction of the captured Confederate State of Louisiana.<ref>Stauffer (2008), ''Giants'', p. 279</ref> Only 10 percent of the state's electorate had to take the loyalty oath. The state was also required to accept the Emancipation Proclamation and abolish slavery in its new constitution. By December 1864, the Lincoln plan abolishing slavery had been enacted not only in Louisiana, but also in Arkansas and Tennessee.<ref name="Peterson 1995 pp. 38–41">Peterson (1995), ''Lincoln in American Memory'', pp. 38–41</ref><ref name="McCarthy 1901 p. 76">McCarthy (1901), ''Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction'', p. 76</ref> In Kentucky, Union Army commanders relied on the proclamation's offer of freedom to slaves who enrolled in the Army and provided freedom for an enrollee's entire family; for this and other reasons, the number of slaves in the state fell by more than 70 percent during the war.<ref name=Harrison>{{Cite journal |last=Harrison |first=Lowell H.  |year=1983 |title=Slavery in Kentucky: A Civil War Casualty |journal=The Kentucky Review |edition=Fall |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=38–40}}</ref>  However, in Delaware<ref>{{cite web|url=http://slavenorth.com/delaware.htm|title=Slavery in Delaware|website=slavenorth.com}}</ref> and Kentucky,<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FdTIIEZ1k2QC&q=kentucky+abolishes+slavery&pg=PA174 |title=A new history of Kentucky |author=Lowell Hayes Harrison and James C. Klotter |year=1997 |page=180|publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=0813126215 }} In 1866, Kentucky refused to ratify the 13th Amendment. It did ratify it in 1976.</ref> slavery continued to be legal until December 18, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment went into effect.