The easy answer is none.
The Emancipation Proclamation was written to only free the slaves that were behind enemy lines. Those slaves were not under his jurisdiction.
The Emancipation Proclamation declared the slaves in ten states free, but there were seventeen states in which blacks were held as slaves…
There were exemptions as well .. as Abe readily admitted that this move was a “war measure” (i.e. hoping to incite a slave uprising to end the war earlier, as he had no real desire initially to “make slaves free”)
..the portions of Virginia and Louisiana which were occupied by Union forces were exempt from it, meaning that their slaves were not freed. This was made clear by a circular issued by Union Provost Marshall Captain A.B. Long in New Liberia, Louisiana on April 24, 1863. In it, he informed the slaves in St. Martin Parish who thought that they were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation that they were not because that Parish was exempted in it … Lincoln declared the slaves not under his control free, but not those who were under his control.
This make perfect sense as Abraham Lincoln had offered perpetual slavery in the states that had seceded IF they returned to “the Union” according to his first inaugural address when he referenced the Corwin Amendment.
The slaves in the District of Columbia had been freed by act of Congress on April 16, 1862, and those in U.S. territories by the same on June 17, 1862, before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Lincoln then tried to get Delaware to be the next entity to free its slaves, but the state refused. Under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, Washington, D.C. and the territories were the only jurisdictions over which the Federal Government had authority. Authority over slavery in the states was reserved to the states themselves.
So Lincoln had no authority under the Constitution .. but we know that many presidents of the United States have disregarded that document ever since. Even George Washington’s “Whiskey Rebellion” move was not constitutional.
So what law actually freed the slaves in the United States of America?
The date on which the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified was the date upon which the last of the slaves were truly freed. Therefore, December 6 should be celebrated as Emancipation Day.
From Abbeville Institute
Lysander Spooner had it right:
