Emancipation proclamation

Did you know the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free anyone? Enslaved African people had been freeing themselves and heading north, offering to serve Union forces, since the beginning off the Civil War and before. Under the rules of war and slavery laws, enslaved people were "contrabands of war" and should have been returned to the South. This made no sense militarily. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed people from slavery in the states that were in rebellion, over which they had no jurisdiction. It did change their status from contraband to human though, and gave the Union its excuse to employ freed people, first in auxiliary jobs, then as armed fighters. This weakened the South, reinforced the North and was no doubt a factor in the Union's eventual victory, a victory that to freed people was the biggest and most successful slave revolt inn history.