Title: Why Is the Emancipation Proclamation Important? - BrightHub Education
Headings: Why Is the Emancipation Proclamation Important?
Why Is the Emancipation Proclamation Important?
The Limitations of the Document
How It Changed the War
Other Effects of the Proclamation
References
This post is part of the series: US History Study Guides

Content: In fact, it only applied to states that had already seceded from the Union and had not yet been returned to Union control. That meant that the Border states, as well as the Confederate states that the North had already brought back into their control, were not affected by the proclamation at all. The only slaves that were theoretically affected by the Proclamation were those that were in Confederate-controlled states - which were not under Lincoln’s jurisdiction at the time. In other words, the slaves were not yet free until the Union won the war. Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward noted this irony when he said, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.” How It Changed the War
So then what was the purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation? How did it change the course of the Civil War? In fact, the Proclamation was more of a symbolic statement than anything else. It didn’t change the existence of slavery, but it did change the meaning of the Civil War. Originally, the war was merely a fight in which the North was trying to preserve the Union by reuniting the North and South.